Consumers’ Opinion on Dried Pomegranate Arils to Determine the Best Processing Conditions

Abstract

Consumers' preference is essential to improve processed food products quality, but small companies sometimes lacks knowledge or tools to develop consumer studies. The aim of the present study was to investigate consumers' insight to recommend the best drying methodology for pomegranate arils. With the aim of providing information that industry can correlate to the drivers of liking, descriptive sensory characteristics, and volatile compounds of the samples were determined and related with consumers' responses. A total of 19 volatiles of dehydrated pomegranate arils were determined using solid-phase microextraction and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Partial least square regression (PLS) results indicated that consumers overall liking was positively correlated with "pom ID", "sweet", and "fruity" attributes, and also volatile compounds of the esters family. Overall liking was negatively correlated with the "off-flavor" and "burnt" attributes, related to the furan compounds family. Penalty analysis indicated that the sample corresponding with the current commercial product needed improvement on the "pom ID", "fruity", and "sweetness" parameters. All the samples processed using the proposed new drying techniques were more liked than the commercial sample, highlighting a sample dried using pre-osmotic dehydration in Wonderful concentrate pomegranate juice.Practical Application: Consumers' preference is essential to improve processed food products quality, but small companies sometimes lack knowledge or tools to conduct consumer studies. The present study provides useful information to understand consumers' preferences of a healthy product such as pomegranate dehydrated arils. Also, the link of physicochemical and sensory tools is clearly described, providing information about possible sensory quality indicators.

Optimization of roasting conditions in hydroSOStainable almonds using volatile and descriptive sensory profiles and consumer acceptance

“…Partial least square regression (PLS) analysis was conducted to determine the drivers of liking of the samples and was explained by 93% of the variation in Y variables (volatiles and sensory descriptive results) and 87% of the variation in X variables (consumers) (Calín‐Sánchez et al., 2011; Cano‐Lamadrid, Vázquez‐Araújo, Sánchez‐Rodríguez, Wodyło, & Carbonell‐Barrachina, 2018; Vázquez‐Araújo, Chambers, Adhikari, & Carbonell‐Barrachina, 2010; Vázquez‐Araújo, Koppel, Iv, E., & Carbonell‐Barrachina, 2011). Data are represented using a map to provide information of consumers overall liking with the 35 detected volatile compounds and descriptive sensory parameters (Figure 3); only statistically significant parameters ( P < 0.05) were included in this analysis.…”

“…Additionally, to overall liking, JAR questions were also asked during the consumer study to see which of the attributes penalized liking. To understand the relationship between JAR scores and consumer liking, penalty analysis was conducted (Cano‐Lamadrid et al., 2018; Lipan et al., 2019; Narayanan, Chinnasamy, Jin, & Clark, 2014). Figure 4 shows the proportion of consumers opinion plots against the mean drops (penalty).…”

How a Spanish Group of Millennial Generation Perceives the Commercial Novel Smoothies?

“…This tendency does not occur in all fruit-based products. For instance, in pomegranate-based jelly, fruit notes were not a good driver, with color and brightness being the most important drivers [21], but, in pomegranate dried products, both fruity and color attributes were part of the consumer drivers [23]. Four of the seven sensory attributes were found to be improvable in smoothie E, a model of the group 1 cluster.…”

“…Eight trained panelists (aged 25 to 55 years; 4 females and 4 males) with more than 600 h of training in sensory testing from the department of Agro-Food Technology (UMH) participated in this study. The panel was selected and trained following the ISO standard 8586-1 (1993), and it is specialized in descriptive sensory evaluation of fruit products [17,[21][22][23]. For the present study, the panel worked during 2 orientation sessions (90 min for each one) discussing the main organoleptic characteristics of commercial smoothies.…”

A Critical Overview of Labeling Information of Pomegranate Juice‐Based Drinks: Phytochemicals Content and Health Claims

“…Color is one of the most important attributes influencing consumer preference (Cano-Lamadrid et al, 2018), and its intensity depends on the copigmentation of anthocyanins (ACNs, responsible of Pom juice color) with copigments (for example, phenolic acids). CD values, which has a high correlation with catechinphlorogucinol and monomeric ACNs (R = 0.866) (Türkyılmaz &Özkan, 2014), are shown in Table 1.…”