Effect of cold plasma on different polyphenol compounds: A review

Abstract

Thermal processing has been predominantly used in the food industry to improve food safety and shelf life. However, heat treatment induces detrimental effects like cooked flavor, texture change, and alteration in sensory attributes. These disadvantages encouraged the food industry to adopt non-thermal food processing technologies. Cold plasma is a promising non-thermal food processing method that uses charged, highly reactive gaseous molecules and species to inactivate contaminating microorganisms present in foods. Thus, it has attracted the attention of scientists globally. This review gives the reader an overview of cold plasma technology fundamentals and the detailed mechanism of interaction of reactive plasma species with the polyphenol compounds (simple phenolic acid, individual phenolic compounds, flavonoids, and anthocyanin) present in food. The impact of cold plasma on polyphenol compounds mainly depends on the food matrix and plasma process parameters, viz. voltage, feed gas, and treatment time. Among various polyphenols, flavonoids are degraded faster because of their high ability to scavenge plasma-generated free radicals. The reactive species cause oxidative degradation, double bond cleavage of polyphenol compounds, and aid in the extraction of phenolic compounds. The cold plasma technology has both positive and negative impacts on polyphenol concentration.

Exploring the impacts of novel cold plasma technology on the volatile profile, flavor, and aroma properties of fruits and vegetables—A review

“…FOOD SAFETY AND HEALTH Among the other important parameters that could influence the quality of the processed food are the following: feed gas type (noble gases, oxygen, nitrogen, air, or gas mixtures), gas flow rate, and plasma treatment times that could affect the nature of produced reactive species and induce various chemical reactions (Kumar et al, 2023). In this context, Campelo et al (2020b) reported that short processing time and the low plasma flow rate led to a 9.4% increase in the woody notes and 23.7% reduction in the camphoreous notes of the camu-camu pulp due to the rearrangement and conversion of α-fenchol to camphene.…”

“…Among the other important parameters that could influence the quality of the processed food are the following: feed gas type (noble gases, oxygen, nitrogen, air, or gas mixtures), gas flow rate, and plasma treatment times that could affect the nature of produced reactive species and induce various chemical reactions (Kumar et al., 2023). In this context, Campelo et al.…”

“…Increasing the exposure time to plasma would give enough time for reactive species to influence the chemical compounds of the food, forming new compounds, or inducing degradation reactions (Kumar et al., 2023). For example, increasing the plasma treatment time of lemon verbena led to a reduction in the content of the essential oil (EO) from 1.2 to 0.9 (% v/w).…”

“…Heat processing is one of the most common treatments used in the food industry, but it was reported to induce adverse effects on the nutritional, organoleptic, and physicochemical properties of food products (Soares et al., 2017). Consequently, nonthermal processing methods have been considered as alternative or complementary processes to conventional thermal treatments (Alves Filho et al., 2020)among which are high‐pressure processing (Marszałek et al., 2017), ultrasound processing (Adekunte et al., 2010), radiation processing (Tremarin et al., 2017), pulsed electric field (Buckow et al., 2013), and cold plasma (CP) (Kumar et al., 2023).…”

“…Fruit aroma is determined by a complex mixture of many volatile compounds including alcohols, aldehydes, and esters (Defilippi et al., 2009; El Hadi et al., 2013). Recently some review articles have been published on the food processing by CP, focusing mainly on the potentials of CP technology for microbial decontamination (Ekezie et al., 2019; Misra & Jo, 2017; Nwabor et al., 2022; Punia Bangar et al., 2022), induced chemical, physical, and physiological quality attributes (Bourke et al., 2018; Chen et al., 2020; Saremnezhad et al., 2021), and changes of proteins (Kopuk et al., 2022; Muhammad et al., 2018; Pankaj et al., 2018; Tolouie et al., 2018), lipids (Gavahian et al., 2018; Pérez‐Andrés et al., 2020), vitamins, and polyphenolic compounds (Kumar et al., 2023; Muhammad et al., 2018; Munekata et al., 2020; Pankaj et al., 2018; Saremnezhad et al., 2021; Sruthi et al., 2021) after CP processing. However, a detailed review on the impact of CP treatment on the volatile organic compounds (VOCs), in fruits and vegetables is lacking in the available literature.…”