MANAGING QUALITY CHANGES OF GREEN BEANS AND CARROTS ALONG STORAGE WITH TEMPERATURE FLUCTUATIONS

摘要

Freezing and succeeding frozen storage is one of the most efficient methods to preserve vegetables quality.However, frozen vegetables are often subjected to fluctuating temperatures due to poor cold chain control,leading to ice recrystallization and sublimation thus producing quality losses.This work aims to assess the relevant quality parameters: frost formation, drip loss and vitamin C levelsduring 12 months of frozen storage with temperature fluctuations. Here, frozen green beans and carrots werestored in four different freezers: -8 ± 3, -12 ± 3, -18 ± 3 and -23 ± 3 °C. In each freezer, two compartmentswere formed to achieve different amplitudes of fluctuation: ± 0.1 and ± 2 °C. To incorporate the qualityevolution kinetics, the experimental data were fitted to afirst order quality kinetics and predict thetemperature dependency using Arrhenius model.