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A soft, pasty, high-moisture surface defect occurs with progressive brining of Mozzarella cheese. Addition of calcium is traditionally used to prevent this defect but the underlying mechanism is not clear. Mozzarella cheese was formed into a cylinder inside brine on its plane surface to ensure semi-infinite, unidirectional mass transfer and placed into brine containing 0, 0.1, or 0.25% (wt/wt) calcium chloride. To monitor the effect on cheese composition of calcium in brine, we measured calcium and water contents of the cheese during brining. The extent of calcium loss from the cheese decreased significantly with the addition of calcium. Addition of calcium to a final concentration of 0.25% decreased the loss of calcium from 94.13 to 18.22% from the outside region of the cheese after 30 d, and the water content of the cheese was decreased from 67.8 to 48.8%. To further elucidate the effect of calcium in brine, the Boltzmann method was used to determine the effective diffusion coefficient value, and low-field nuclear magnetic resonance was used to measure the cheese transversal relaxation time. The migration of calcium interfered with salt diffusion. At the end of brining, the amount of water bound to the protein of the cheese significantly increased. Addition of calcium to a final concentration of 0.25% diminished the proportion of bound water by 20.96%. In conclusion, addition of calcium hinders the diffusion of sodium and modifies the distribution of water in Mozzarella cheese during brining.

Juice sac granulation occurring in pummelo fruits [Citrus maxima (Burm.) Merr.] is an undesirable trait, and the underlying mechanism remains unresolved. Previous studies have shown that lignin metabolism is closely associated with the process of juice sac granulation. Here, a method suitable for lignin isolation from pummelo tissues is established. Acetylated lignins from different pummelo tissues and cultivars were analyzed by HSQC NMR. The results showed that lignins in granulated juice sacs were characterized by an extremely high abundance of guaiacyl units (91.13-96.82%), in contrast to lignins from other tissues, including leaves, stems, and segment membranes. The abnormally accumulated lignins in granulated juice sacs were specific and mainly polymerized from coniferyl alcohol. No significant difference was found in lignin types among various cultivars. These findings indicated that the mechanism of juice sac granulation might be similar among various cultivars, although very different degrees of juice sac granulation can be observed.

Chalcone synthase gene (BaCHS) from Brunfelsia acuminata flowers was isolated using RT-PCR and RACE. The coding region of the gene is 1425-bp with an open reading frame of 1170-bp, 73-bp 5′UTR, and 172-bp 3′UTR. Its deduced protein does not have a signal peptide but does contain a cond_enzyme superfamily domain, and consists of 389 amino acids with a predicted molecular mass of 42,699 Da and a pI of 6.57. The deduced amino acid sequence of BaCHS shares 90%, 88%, 85%, 84% and 79% identity with CHS from Petunia hybrida, Nicotiana tabacum, Solanum lycopersicum, Capsicum annuum and Camellia sinensis, respectively. The striking color change from dark purple to light purple and ultimately lead to pure white resulted from a decline in anthocyanin content of the petals and was preceded by a decrease in the expression of BaCHS. Its gene expression was positively correlated with the contents of anthocyanin (p ≤ 0.01).

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