Thermal degradation of cloudy apple juice phenolic constituents

• Degradation susceptibility of cloudy apple juice phenolic constituents.
• Untargeted metabolomics approach conducted for process optimisation.
• Procyanidin were the most heat labile phenolic compounds.
• Low impact of the high-temperature short-time pasteurisation.

Although conventional thermal processing is still the most commonly used preservation technique in cloudy apple juice production, detailed knowledge on phenolic compound degradation during thermal treatment is still limited. To evaluate the extent of thermal degradation as a function of time and temperature, apple juice samples were isothermally treated during 7200 s over a temperature range of 80–145 °C. An untargeted metabolomics approach based on liquid chromatography–high resolution mass spectrometry was developed and applied with the aim to find out the most heat labile phenolic constituents in cloudy apple juice. By the use of a high resolution mass spectrometer, the high degree of in-source fragmentation, the quality of deconvolution and the employed custom-made database, it was possible to achieve a high degree of structural elucidation for the thermolabile phenolic constituents. Procyanidin subclass representatives were discovered as the most heat labile phenolic compounds of cloudy apple juice.