Effects of blanching on the quality of pineapple (Ananas comosus) and changes during storage in syrup / Nurul Farhanah Azhari

This study was conducted to determine the effect of traditional hot-water blanching on pineapples that are being processed for storage in syrup. Based on the result obtained, blanching treatments caused significant decrease in pH, total soluble solid, total plate count, ascorbic acid, total phenols, as well as colour for fresh, blanched and syrup pineapple. Two antioxidant analyses were also conducted which were Ferric Reducing Antioxidant Power (FRAP) and 2,2-diphenylpierylhydrazyl radical scavenging (DPPH). Results demonstrated that fresh pineapple has higher antioxidant activity in reducing ferric ion compared to pineapple that was blanched and stored in syrup solution. DPPH assay was carried out to determine the scavenging activity of free radical in pineapple and results showed that pineapple was not good free radicals scavenger since the value obtained were quite low. From this point of view, blanching indeed gave influence on the quality attributes of pineapple and physicochemical changes were also observed during storage in syrup.