College of Food Science and Technology , Nanjing Agricultural University , Nanjing , 210095 , PR China.
School of Agricultural Engineering and Food Science , Shandong University of Technology , Zibo 255000 , PR China.
J Agric Food Chem. 2019 Apr 10;67(14):4043-4053. doi: 10.1021/acs.jafc.9b00656. Epub 2019 Mar 27.
Cold plasma technology offers new opportunities to the decontamination and preservation of fruits and vegetables. In the present research, strawberries were cut into four wedges and then treated with dielectric barrier discharge plasma at 45 kV for 1 min and stored for 1 week (4 °C). Metabolomic analysis suggested that plasma treatment improved the biosynthesis of the metabolites in the "flavones and flavonol biosynthesis" pathway and "biosynthesis of phenylpropanoids" pathway in fresh-cut strawberries. Physiological assay demonstrated that plasma treatment maintained the texture properties and inhibited microbial growth of fresh-cut strawberries. In addition, plasma treatment also promoted the accumulation of total phenolics, total flavonoid, and anthocyanin by enhancing the critical enzyme activities and activating related gene expression in phenylpropanoid as well as reactive oxygen species metabolism, which contributed greatly to the enhancement of antioxidant capacity of strawberry wedges. Our investigation provided a new perspective of the effect of plasma treatment on the safety and quality of strawberry wedges and suggested that cold plasma treatment holds promise as an emerging processing technology for improving the quality and antioxidant activity of postharvest fruits and vegetables.
冷等离子体技术为水果和蔬菜的消毒和保鲜提供了新的机会。在本研究中，草莓被切成四块楔形，然后用介电阻挡放电等离子体在 45 kV 下处理 1 分钟，并在 4°C 下储存 1 周。代谢组学分析表明，等离子体处理改善了鲜切草莓中“类黄酮和黄酮醇生物合成”途径和“苯丙烷生物合成”途径中代谢物的生物合成。生理测定表明，等离子体处理保持了鲜切草莓的质地特性，并抑制了微生物的生长。此外，等离子体处理还通过增强苯丙烷和活性氧代谢中关键酶的活性以及激活相关基因表达，促进了总酚、总类黄酮和花青素的积累，这极大地提高了草莓楔形物的抗氧化能力。我们的研究为等离子体处理对草莓楔形物安全性和质量的影响提供了新的视角，并表明冷等离子体处理有望成为一种新兴的加工技术，用于提高采后水果和蔬菜的质量和抗氧化活性。
