MANGO PULP (MANGIFERA INDICA L.) PRESERVED BY HURDLE TECHNOLOGY: PHYSICOCHEMICAL, MICROBIOLOGIC AND RHEOLOGIC CHARACTERIZATION

The quality of food can be adversely affected by physical, chemical, biochemical and microbiologic processes. Thus, hurdle technology was developed as a new concept that employs a combination of different preservation techniques to achieve multitarget, mild but reliable preservation effects. The aim of this work was to preserve mango pulp by hurdle technology as an alternative procedure to freezing process. The process of applying these hurdle parameters consisted of water activity depression stepped by the addition of 25% glucose syrup and sucrose with respect to pulp weight, adjustment of pH to pH 3 and incorporation of 0.1% potassium sorbate as a preservative. The physicochemical and microbiologic behaviors of the preserved product by hurdle technology were satisfactory compared with the control (frozen mango pulp), and the rheologic behaviors of the attained products were determined by the Herschel–Bulkley model for non-Newtonian fluids. PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS This article describes mango pulp preserved by combined methods, as well as its physicochemical, microbiologic and rheologic characterization. In general, hurdle technology of several foods has been studied extensively; nevertheless, a limited number of published papers about mango pulp preserved by this method are found in the literature. Thus, the experimental data reported in this paper may be important for the scientific community of food science and technology.