Impact of initial moisture content levels, freezing rate and instant controlled pressure drop treatment (DIC) on dehydrofreezing process and quality attributes of quince fruits

Dehydrofreezing process involves water partial removal before freezing. This treatment has been proposed in order to reduce the negative impacts of conventional or even accelerated freezing, especially on the textural quality of high water content fruits and vegetables. Indeed, in such cases, freezing and thawing processes result in severe damage of the integrity of product's cell structure due to the formation of ice crystals. For this purpose, quince fruits (7 g H2O/g db) were subjected to convective air drying of 40 degrees C and 3m/s to reach different water content levels of 2, 1, and 0.3 g H2O/g db. Freezing profiles obtained at various freezing rates (V-1, V-2, and V-3) for different water contents allowed the main freezing characteristics such as the Initial Freezing Temperature (IFT), the Practical Freezing time (PFt), and the Specific Freezing time (SFt) to be assessed. The impact of freezing rate was important on PFt and SFt, and more pronounced for high water contents (W between 7 and 2 g H2O/g db (dry basis)). Furthermore, IFT decreased sharply when initial sample water content decreased. Indeed, it started at -0.8 degrees C for W = 7g H2O/g db, while it reached a value of -8.2 degrees C for samples of W = 1g H2O/g db. Since convective air drying normally triggers shrinkage which causes a detrimental deformation of fruit structures, instant controlled pressure drop (DIC) treatment was used to improve the texture and enhance the whole dehydrofreezing performance and the final frozen-thawed product quality. Moreover, DIC implied a slight increase of PFt compared to untreated ones. On the other hand, quality attributes were estimated through the assessment of thawed water exudate (TWE g H2O/100 g db), color and texture (maximum puncture force as index of firmness): freezing rate and water content had great impacts on TWE. Hence, the lower the water content, the weaker the TWE. Furthermore, the TWE of the pre-dried quince (0.3 g H2O/g db) had higher value for DIC-textured samples than for the un-treated ones. Indeed, DIC-texturing leads to a well-controlled structure expansion of the cell wall. These textural changes resulted in more lixiviation of residual water. Consequently, water becomes more available, hence more releasable after thawing. Finally, the partial removal of water by air drying before freezing remarkably reduced the negative impact of freezing/thawing processes on final quince color. Decisively, the firmness of quince fruit increased with the decrease of water content level.