engleski

Packaging atmosphere effect on colour and sensory quality of fresh-cut Lady Clair potato

Potato is very popular among population not only because of its sensory attributes but also for its nutritive value. The shelf life of fresh-cut potato is limited to one or two weeks in refrigerator due to its susceptibility to browning, possible developing off-flavour or some other negative changing that occurs during storage. Many factors are responsible for such undesirable quality loss but one of the most important is potato variety. Furthermore, atmosphere of packaging is not negligible, too. So, the objective of this work was to investigate colour stability and sensory attributes of fresh cut potato variety Lady Clair packaged in vacuum and modified atmosphere (MAP) stored ten days at 3 oC. As control peeled and sliced air packaged potato was used. The packaging material was transparent polymeric bi- layer pouches composed of polyamide and polyethylene with a thickness of 90 m. For the MAP samples gas composition of 10% CO2- 3% O2- 87% N2 was used. Colour was measured by colorimeter as L*a*b*-values, Quantitative descriptive analysis was used to sensory evaluate fresh-cut and cooked potato slices on the second, fourth, seventh and tenth day. The O2 and CO2 contents were measured from the packages with a hand- held gas analyser OXYBABY O2 and CO2 were almost constant during the entire storage time for both air and MAP samples. In air-packed samples O2 was between 18 – 20 %, and CO2 was between 1 - 2 %. In MAP CO2 was lower and almost zero while O2 was 7% at the beginning and 17 % at the end of storage. In vacuum packaged samples higher oscillation of O2 (10-20%) and CO2 (0.5-7%) occurred. With storage time L*-values (lightness) slightly decreased but the less colour changes were measured in MAP samples. The best sensory evaluation showed vacuum packaged samples.

Packaging atmosphere, colour and sensory quality, fresh-cut potato

This research was financially supported by the Croatian Science Foundation