Investigating chemical changes during shelf-life of thermal and high-pressure high-temperature sterilised carrot purees: A 'fingerprinting kinetics' approach

This work investigates chemical changes during shelf-life of thermally and high pressure high temperature (HPHT) sterilised carrot purees using a 'fingerprinting kinetics' approach. Fingerprinting enabled selection of Strecker aldehydes, terpenes, phenylpropanoids, fatty acid derivatives and carotenoid degradation products as volatiles clearly changing during shelf-life. Next, kinetic modelling of these volatiles was performed to compare their reaction kinetics during storage in differently sterilised samples. Immediately after processing, the Strecker aldehydes were detected at higher levels in thermally sterilised samples. During storage, the compounds increased at a comparable rate in thermally and HPHT processed samples. In contrast, immediately after processing, most of the naturally occurring terpenes and phenylpropanoids were better preserved in HPHT treated samples. Nevertheless, by the end of storage, the concentration of these compounds decreased to almost the same level in both thermal and HPHT samples (with a higher degradation rate in HPHT samples).