Pulsed Light Processing in the Preservation of Juices and Fresh-Cut Fruits: A Review

During the last years, the worldwide market of fruit-based foods, mainly juices and fresh-cut commodities, has experienced an increasing consumption trend, which can be mainly attributed to changes in the human lifestyles. However, mechanical operations used during processing, as well as the chemical compounds and presence of native microorganisms, bring a rapid deterioration of juices and fresh-cut fruits. Therefore, those commodities are largely susceptible to microbial proliferation and physicochemical deterioration, triggering the spoilage and loss of the nutritional and sensorial attributes. Thus, minimal processing and innovative methods to produce fresh-like foods have been strongly studied during the last years. Consequently, pulsed light (PL) has emerged as an innovative technology for solid food and juice sanitization. The effectiveness of PL to inactivate and reduce the microbial loads has been attributed to physicochemical, photothermal and photophysical mechanisms. PL processing is not only capable of impacting on the microbial charge but also in the shelf-life, the amount of nutritional and antioxidant compounds and the sensorial attributes of vegetable products. However, those effects are also strongly associated with factors such as processing variables, food matrix properties and the microorganism characteristics. Hence, in this review a compilation of the current studies focused to evaluate the effects of PL treatments over the microbial inactivation and shelf-life extension, the concentration of bioactive compounds and antioxidant potential, as well as the changes of the physicochemical and sensorial quality of juices and fresh-cut fruits were discussed.