Impact of high-hydrostatic pressure and thermal processing on the antioxidant profiles and capacity of tomato juice during storage

While high-hydrostatic pressure (HHP) has successfully been applied to the pasteurization of fruit and vegetable juice beverages, their quality-stable shelf life during storage has not been fully elucidated. Therefore, we investigated the effect of HHP (550 MPa/10 min) treatment on polyphenols, carotenoids, ascorbic acids, and antioxidant capacity in tomato juice and their changes during 4-week refrigerated storage. High-temperature short-time (HTST, 110 °C/8.6 s) treatment was used as a control. The results revealed a significantly greater presence of polyphenols, carotenoids, ascorbic acid content, and antioxidant capacity in tomato juice after HHP processing than after HTST processing. However, the total carotenoids and total phenolic content in HHP-treated tomato juice decreased dramatically and approached that in the HTST-treated tomato juice after 1 week of storage. Therefore, HHP’s advantage in maintaining antioxidant compounds and capacity was only evident during the first week of storage in tomato juice. Nevertheless, the post-storage caffeic acid, quercetin, ferulic acid, and p-coumaric acid concentrations were 8.31, 4.77, 1.86, and 6.84 μg/g higher in the HHP-treated than in HTST-treated tomato juice, respectively. This study provides a new perspective for predicting HHP products' quality-stable shelf life.