Toasted yerba mate: Impact of drying methods on bioactive compounds, antioxidant capacity, and mate tea consumer acceptance

摘要

This work investigates the consumer's acceptance of hot and iced mate tea, bioactivecompounds content and antioxidant capacity of toasted yerba mate leaves driedfrom various processes, aiming at presenting drying alternatives to the traditional,and mostly used, methods. Therefore, five drying methods were tested, traditionalrotary dryer, conveyor dryer and three alternatives including microwave oven, overdryer at 40, 60, 80°C and freeze-drying,which was followed by toasting. Overall,the microwave oven and freeze dryer were highly efficient and can be considered asdrying alternatives with high values of total phenolic compounds (78.72 mg GAE g~(−1)),antioxidant capacity by DPPH/ABTS (376.6 TEAC μmol g~(−1)/1062.04 TEAC μmol g−~(−1)),caffeine (13.25 mg g~(−1)) and caffeoylquinic acids (69 mg g−1). Using a reworked pythonscript, the preference map of teas dried in microwave oven and freeze-dryingresulted in similar sensory acceptance for hot tea, produced using traditional dryingmethods, with a slight decrease for the iced tea.