Effects of tissue pre-degassing followed by ultrasound-assisted freezing on freezing efficiency and quality attributes of radishes

The rapid freezing technique for porous foods using tissue pre-degassing followed by ultrasound-assisted freezing (UF) was developed, and its effects on quality attributes of radishes including tissue air volume, hardness, total calcium contents, bonded calcium contents, retention rates of bonded calcium and microstructures were in-vestigated. To evaluate the freezing efficiency, parameters including total freezing time, phase transition time, and the increases of freezing rate and phase transition rate were determined. Besides, multivariate statistical analyses including principal component analysis (PCA) and hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA) were performed to visualize and further analyze the quality differences of radishes under different treatments. Results suggested that decreasing tissue air volumes can significantly shorten the phase transition time of UF. Samples treated by pre-degassing for 5 min at -0.09 MPa followed by UF (D--0.09MPa(5min)-UF) showed the freezing rate and phase transition rate increased by 28.8% and 29.8%, respectively, as compared with the same pre-degassed samples frozen by immersion freezing (D--0.09MPa(5min)-IF). Retention rates of bonded calcium positively correlated with the sample hardness, announcing the importance of bonded calcium maintenance during radish freezing. Both PCA and HCA indicated that D--0.09MPa(5min)-UF endowed radishes with quality attributes more similar to the fresh ones, which was further verified by microstructure analysis, showing remarkably alleviated plasma membrane puncture, cell separation and deformation in D--0.09MPa(5min)-UF samples. The current study proved that the technique of tissue pre-degassing followed by UF could effectively improve the freezing efficiency and quality attributes of frozen radishes, and thus have great potentials in rapid freezing of porous foods.