Food Chemistry xxx (2017) xxx–xxx

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Food Chemistry
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/foodchem

Osmotic dehydration of organic kiwifruit pre-treated by pulsed electric

fields and monitored by NMR
Maria Victoria Traffano-Schiffo a, Luca Laghi b,c, Marta Castro-Giraldez a,⇑, Urszula Tylewicz b,
Pietro Rocculi b,c, Luigi Ragni b,c, Marco Dalla Rosa b,c, Pedro J. Fito a
a
Instituto Universitario de Ingeniería de Alimentos para el Desarrollo, Universidad Politécnica de Valencia, Camino de Vera s/n, 46022 Valencia, Spain
b
Department of Agricultural and Food Sciences, University of Bologna, P.zza Goidanich 60, 47521 Cesena, Italy
c
Interdepartmental Centre for Agri-Food Industrial Research, University of Bologna, Via Quinto Bucci 336, 47521 Cesena, Italy

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Osmotic dehydration (OD) is a widely used preservation technique that consists in the reduction in food
Received 21 December 2016 water activity by the immersion of the biological tissue in hypertonic solutions. The aim of this work was
Received in revised form 9 February 2017 to analyze the effect of pulsed electric fields (PEF) in mass transfer as a pre-treatment of the OD using
Accepted 10 February 2017
NMR. In this sense, PEF pre-treatments were done using three different voltages (100, 250 and 400 V/
Available online xxxx
cm) and 60 number of pulse. The OD of kiwifruit was carried out in 61.5% of sucrose solution at 25 °C,
for a contact period from 0 to 120 min. The water distribution into the cellular tissue was studied by
Keywords:
NMR relaxometry. In conclusion, NMR is an excellent technique for quantifying water molecules accord-
Kiwifruit
Pulsed electric fields
ing to their interactions in the fruit tissue, obtaining the adsorbed water and opening the possibility to
Osmotic dehydration apply the BET model to fit the adsorbed isotherm over the whole range of water activity.
TD-NMR Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Water distribution

1. Introduction Jamal, 2016; Li et al., 2012; Nowacka, Tylewicz, Laghi, Dalla Rosa,
& Witrowa-Rajchert, 2014), pulsed-vacuum (Corrêa, Pereira,
Kiwifruit is well known as a source of vitamin C besides its high Vieira, & Hubinger, 2010; Rastogi, Raghavarao, Niranjan, & Knorr,
levels of fiber, minerals, antioxidants and other bioactive sub- 2002) and pulsed electric fields (Amami, Vorobiev, & Kechaou,
stances that present beneficial effects on health (Diamante, 2006; Wiktor, Śledź, Nowacka, Chudoba, & Witrowa-Rajchert,
Savage, & Vanhanen, 2012). It is constituted by three distinct types 2014).
of tissues: outer pericarp, inner pericarp and core, which have Pulsed electric fields (PEF) is a non-thermal and preservation
structural and compositional differences (Castro-Giráldez, Fito, & technology which consists in applying electric pulses through a
Fito, 2011). biological tissue placed between two electrodes for very short peri-
Osmotic dehydration (OD) is a conservation process commonly ods of time (micro- to milli-seconds) (Dellarosa et al., 2016;
used to increase the shelf-life of fruits. It consists in the immersion Faridnia, Burritt, Bremer, & Oey, 2015; Toepfl, Heinz, & Knorr,
of the biological tissue in a hypertonic solution, which generates 2005), causing structural changes in the cell membrane
fluxes of water and solutes and, as a consequence, the water activ- (Angersbach, Heinz, & Knorr, 2000). This phenomenon could be
ity of the product is reduced (Moraga, Moraga, Fito, & Martínez- classified as electroporation or electrocompression and according
Navarrete, 2009). From a thermodynamic point of view, the differ- to the electric field strength they could be reversible or irreversible.
ence in the chemical potentials (water and sucrose) between the Electroporation is produced when the external electric field
sample and the dipping solution promotes the water release from induces conformational changes and the reorganization of the
the fruit to the osmotic solution and the simultaneous solutes phospholipidic bilayer, generating pores (Baier, Bußler, & Knorr,
inflow from the external solution to the fruit (Castro-Giráldez, 2015; Liu, Han, Zeng, Sun, & Aadil, 2016). On the other hand, the
Tylewicz, Fito, Dalla Rosa, & Fito, 2011). In order to increase yields electrocompression is produced due to the charges (electrolytes)
and to reduce processing times, different techniques coupled to OD accumulation at both sides of the cell membrane, which attracts
treatment have been studied, such as ultrasound (Ahmed, Qazi, & each other, compressing it. When this compression exceeds the
elastic restoration force, the disruption of the membrane is
produced generating pores (Calderón-Miranda, González,
⇑ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: [email protected] (M. Castro-Giraldez).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2017.02.046
0308-8146/Ó 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Please cite this article in press as: Traffano-Schiffo, M. V., et al. Osmotic dehydration of organic kiwifruit pre-treated by pulsed electric fields and monitored
by NMR. Food Chemistry (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2017.02.046
2 M.V. Traffano-Schiffo et al. / Food Chemistry xxx (2017) xxx–xxx

Barbosa-Cánovas, & Swanson, 1998; Saulis, 2010; Traffano-Schiffo technology and capacitors as energy tanks (Dellarosa et al.,
et al., 2016). 2016). The cylinders of organic kiwifruit were placed in a
In a previous work about the use of a coupled treatment (PEF/ rectangular treatment chamber equipped with two stainless steel
OD) in organic kiwifruit (Traffano-Schiffo et al., 2016) it has been electrodes (20
20 mm2) with a separation between them of
demonstrated that water losses have increased and accelerated 30 mm and filled with 5 mL of tap water with known conductivity
compared to samples which had not been pretreated with PEF. In at 25 °C.
addition, it has been demonstrated that the pulse electric field pro- PEF pre-treatments were done by applying three different
duces electrolytes mass losses, affecting the active transmembrane pulsed electric fields (100, 250 and 400 V/cm at 50 Hz) with
transports, inducing changes on the overall transport. However, near-rectangular shape pulses, a train of 60 pulses, a fixed pulse
this study could not explain the water distribution inside the cell width of 100 ± 2 ls and a repetition time of 10.0 ± 0.1 ms.
and the internal transports. Due to this, Time Domain Nuclear
Magnetic Resonance (TD-NMR) represents a valuable tool able to 2.2. Osmotic dehydration treatment
study the redistribution of the water during sample processing
(Santagapita et al., 2013), the state of the cell membranes disrup- The osmotic solution at 61.5% (w/w) was prepared with com-
tion, protoplast and tonoplast (Aguiló-Aguayo et al., 2014) and mercial sucrose (Eridana SpA, Bologna, Italia) and distilled water
the block of water and sucrose active pumps due to the electric at 25 °C. Samples were immersed into the sucrose solution main-
pulses (Traffano-Schiffo et al., 2016). taining a relationship of 1:4 (w/w) between the fruit and the
TD-NMR is a fast, non-destructive and non-invasive technique solution.
able to determine the relaxation times parameters, such as the
spin-lattice or longitudinal relaxation (T1) and the spin-spin or 2.3. Analytical determinations
transverse relaxation (T2) of protons differentiating vacuoles, cyto-
plasm/extracellular spaces and cell wall (Santagapita, Tylewicz, A dew point Hygrometer Decagon (AqualabTM, series 3 TE) was
Panarese, Rocculi, & Dalla Rosa, 2016; Tylewicz et al., 2011). used for measuring the water activity (aw), with a preci-
Panarese et al. (2012) were able to separately observe, in the peri- sion ± 0.003. Mass was determined by using a Kern balance ABS
carp of kiwifruit, water located in extracellular spaces and cyto- 320-4N (±0.0001) (KERN & SOHN GmbH, Germany).
plasm, water located in vacuole and protons ascribable to water Volume was determined by image analysis using AdobeÒ Photo-
tightly bound to the most rigid biopolymers. shopÒ CS6 software (Adobe Systems Inc., San Jose, CA, USA). Mois-
The aim of this work was to analyze the effect of PEF used as a ture was determined following the AOAC, 2000 .
pre-treatment of the OD of organic kiwifruit (Actinidia deliciosa cv Soluble solid content was determined by measuring the refrac-
Hayward) in water redistribution by NMR. tometric index with a digital refractometer (KRÜSS OptronicÓ
GmbH, Germany) calibrated with distilled water at 25 °C. Refracto-
metric index was measured in both kiwifruit samples and agent
2. Material and methods
solution after the treatment.
Analytical determinations described above were obtained by
Organic kiwifruits (Actinidia deliciosa cv Hayward) with the
quadruplicate.
same ripeness and similar size were bought on a supermarket
located in Cesena (Italy) and kept refrigerated at 4 ± 1 °C until
2.4. TD-NMR measurements
use. The fruits were tempered at 25 °C, peeled and cylinders
(8 mm diameter and 10 mm length) were obtained from the
Proton transverse relaxation time (T2) decay was measured for
parenchymatic part of the tissue. The initial refractometric indexes
each sample by applying the CPMG pulse sequence (Meiboom &
(°Brix) of the fruits used were 13 ± 1 °Brix.
Gill, 1958), using a Bruker ‘The Minispec’ spectrometer (Bruker
Fresh kiwifruits were characterized by mass, volume, soluble
Corporation, Germany) operating at 20 MHz, as described by
solids content (°Brix), water activity (aw), moisture (kgw/kgT) and
Dellarosa et al. (2016). Each measurement comprised 32,000
TD-NMR by quadruplicate. 12 sample cylinders were used for each
echoes, with an interpulse spacing of 0.08 ms and a recycle delay
treatment (considering all OD times and the triplications for each
of 10 s, which allowed the measurement of proton decays included
measurement, the total number of treated samples was 576). They
between 1 and 3000 ms and avoided sample overheat. Each acqui-
were placed inside the PEF chamber avoiding free spaces between
sition was performed over 8 scans giving rise to a total time of
them and subjected to different electric fields strengths (12 extra
analysis around 90 s. The registered spectra were normalized to
samples were used as control, without PEF-treatment). After, the
unitary area and analyzed by UpenWin software (Borgia, Brown,
samples were weighed and introduced into the osmotic dehydration
& Fantazzini, 1998) to give quasi-continuous distributions of relax-
solution. According to previous results, the selected OD treatment
ation time. The number of output relaxation times, sampled loga-
times were 0, 10, 20, 30, 60 and 120 min (Traffano-Schiffo et al., 2016).
rithmically in the 1–3000 ms range, was set to 100. To obtain
Due to the fact that the samples after treatments show concen-
quantitative information from the T2-weighted decay curves, sig-
tration profiles (non-equilibrated samples), another batch of sam-
nals were fitted using a discrete multi-exponential curve. The fit-
ples were treated and reposed at 4 °C during 24 h in decagon
ting was run using the ‘Levenberg–Marquardt nonlinear least
containers closed with ParafilmÒ (equilibrated samples). Finally,
squares’ algorithm implemented in ‘R’ software (R Foundation for
mass, volume, soluble solids, aw, soluble solids content and TD-
Statistical Computing, Austria). Unlike Santagapita et al. (2013),
NMR were measured as final determinations for non-equilibrated
the optimum number of exponential curves for each tested treat-
and equilibrated samples. In addition, at each osmotic time, an ali-
ment was found to be three, without removing any initial T2
quot of sucrose solution was taken to measure aw and soluble
weighted point.
solids content.
2.5. Desorption isotherm
2.1. Pulsed electric field (PEF) treatment
The desorption isotherm of the adsorbed water was fitted fol-
Pulsed electric field treatments were applied to the samples lowing the BET model using Eq. (1) (Brunauer, Emmett, & Teller,
using monopolar pulse generator equipment based on MOSFET 1938).

Please cite this article in press as: Traffano-Schiffo, M. V., et al. Osmotic dehydration of organic kiwifruit pre-treated by pulsed electric fields and monitored
by NMR. Food Chemistry (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2017.02.046
 M.V. Traffano-Schiffo et al. / Food Chemistry xxx (2017) xxx–xxx 3

X w0 Caw 3. Results and discussion

X ADS
w ¼ ð1Þ
ð1  aw Þð1 þ ðC  1Þaw Þ
During the osmotic treatments, kiwifruit suffers mass variations
where X ADS
w corresponds to the kiwifruit adsorbed moisture (kgw/ which involve the water losses and the sucrose gain. Each chemical
kgdm), Xw0 is the monomolecular moisture layer (kgw/kgdm) and C specie involved in the osmotic dehydration treatment has different
is the energy constant (dimensionless). BET model was fitted by driving forces and ways to move into the cell system. Particularly,
using a non-linear regression with the Statgraphics Centurion XVI water fluxes can be generated by passive and active transports.
software (Statgraphics, Virgina, U.S.A.). Passive transport is driven by water chemical potential gradients

4.00 4.00
Xw(kgw/kgdm) Xw(kgw/kgdm)

3.50 3.50

3.00 3.00

2.50 2.50

2.00 2.00

1.50 1.50

1.00 1.00

0.50 0.50

aws aws
0.00 0.00
0.92 0.93 0.94 0.95 0.96 0.97 0.98 0.99 0.92 0.93 0.94 0.95 0.96 0.97 0.98 0.99

Fig. 1. Relation of moisture in dry basis vs. surface water activity of treated samples; left plot: non-equilibrated samples; right plot: equilibrated samples, where: (h)
corresponds to no PEF (0 V/cm), ( ) 100 V/cm, ( ) 250 V/cm, ( ) 400 V/cm and (solid black line) pure sucrose solution.

Fig. 2. a) T2-weighted signal distribution, normalized to unitary area, registered on fresh samples treated by PEF at 0 (solid line) and 250 V/cm (dashed line). b) T2 and
intensity of the signals from vacuole, cytoplasm + extracellular space and cell wall + membrane protons at 0 (h), 100 ( ), 250 ( ) and 400 ( ) V/cm for samples before OD
treatment. For both T2 and intensity, bars highlight standard deviation around mean.

Please cite this article in press as: Traffano-Schiffo, M. V., et al. Osmotic dehydration of organic kiwifruit pre-treated by pulsed electric fields and monitored
by NMR. Food Chemistry (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2017.02.046
4 M.V. Traffano-Schiffo et al. / Food Chemistry xxx (2017) xxx–xxx

and it could be produced outside the cells by the apoplastic path- activity is a surface value, the non-equilibrated samples are far
ways (Steudle & Frensch, 1996), through transmembrane protein from the sucrose pure solution curve because they have concentra-
channels by the aquaporins (Agre, Bonhivers, & Borgnia, 1998) tion profiles, however, the equilibrated samples will approximate
and across the plasmodesmata channels between cells by the sym- to the pure sucrose solution curve as a function of the amount of
plastic pathways. On the other hand, active transmembrane trans- water that they have in liquid phase.
port is produced by Ca2+ pump and requires energy as ATP. In case The equilibrated samples seem to be ordered as a function of
of high water stress, the homeostatic cell system counteracts the the intensity of the pretreatment, observing that the higher the
water losses by the aquaporins introducing water in cell by cal- pre-treatment the less quantity of water in the liquid phase the
cium pump (Moraga et al., 2009). Transmembrane transports samples present.
(active or passive) are affected by the quantity of water molecules In order to know the water distribution and to quantify the
adsorbed in the membrane, especially in treatments with high amount of water molecules that are not in liquid phase, NMR mea-
water liquid phase (Fito, Fito, Betoret, Argüelles, & Chenoll, 2011). surements have been performed.
In Fig. 1 it is possible to observe the relation between moisture Fig. 2a shows an example of the distribution of T2-weighted
expressed in dry matter and the surface water activity, for equili- signals obtained by TD-NMR in parenchyma tissue of fresh and
brated and non-equilibrated samples pre-treated at different pre-treated with PEF at 250 V/cm kiwifruit. Three protons popula-
intensities of pulsed electric field. Taking into account that tion observed in the non pre-treated samples presented T2 of 1170,
moisture is an average value of the whole sample and the water 425, and 53 ms. Moreover, Fig. 2b shows the intensity (area of

Non-equilibrated samples Equilibrated samples

90 90
a) 80
d) 80

70 70

60 60
r3 (%)

50 50

40 40

30 30

20 20

10 10
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120

65
65

b) 55
e) 55

45
45
r2 (%)

35
35

25
25

15
15

5
5
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120

30 30

c) f)
25 25

20 20
r1 (%)

15 15

10 10

5 5
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120

t (min) t (min)
Fig. 3. Relative intensity of the three proton populations identified by TD-NMR for non-equilibrated and equilibrated samples, where: (h) corresponds to no PEF (0 V/cm), ( )
100 V/cm, ( ) 250 V/cm and ( ) 400 V/cm, being a) and d) vacuole, b) and e) cytoplasm and extracellular liquid phase, c) and f) cell wall and membrane.

Please cite this article in press as: Traffano-Schiffo, M. V., et al. Osmotic dehydration of organic kiwifruit pre-treated by pulsed electric fields and monitored
by NMR. Food Chemistry (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2017.02.046
 M.V. Traffano-Schiffo et al. / Food Chemistry xxx (2017) xxx–xxx 5

distribution T2-weight) by the T2 for each molecular water group Fig. 3 shows the relative intensity along osmotic treatment for
and pre-treatment. The smaller the T2, the lower the mobility of the samples treated with increasing PEF voltage (non-
the water molecule, for this reason it is possible to determine the equilibrated and equilibrated samples). Non-equilibrated samples
origin of each group of molecules in function of the different show the state of the three populations of water just after the
motion capacity that the water molecules have in the tissue. osmotic dehydration process when the samples present internal
The lower value of T2 corresponds to water molecules with less profiles; the equilibrated samples show the distribution of water
mobility, in this group most of water molecules in parenchyma tis- populations when the transports have finished. On the other hand,
sue are the molecules subjected to electrical adsorption forces. This samples skipping PEF treatment allow observing the fate of the
group is adsorbed on the cell wall and on the cell membrane (proto- three populations upon osmosis only, while Santagapita et al.
plast and tonoplast). The remaining groups might correspond to the (2013) showed that the cell wall population was poorly affected
different liquid phases that make up the parenchyma, from the inte- by osmotic treatment. In the present work it reached a relative
rior of the cell mostly occupied by the vacuole (higher T2 and higher intensity around 20–25% and, consequently, confirming the contri-
intensity), to the cytoplasm and external liquid phase or intra liquid bution from extracellular protons suggested by the data obtained
phase produced in the plasmolization process (intermediate T2). with no osmosis applied.
PEF treatment caused, for each of the intensities applied, a As it is described by some authors (Lauffer, 1987; Otting &
decrease of average T2 of vacuole and cytoplasm protons popula- Wuethrich, 1989; Tsukahara, Hibara, Ikeda, & Kitamori, 2007),
tions. Chemical exchange between water (with a T2 around 2 s) the intensity is proportional to the induced protons. When
and exchangeable sites of the biopolymers of the structures (with induction occurs at a fixed frequency that only affects the protons
a T2 of milliseconds) dominates T2 of these protons populations, as of a specific molecule, in this case water, the intensity is propor-
demonstrated for kiwifruit (Panarese et al., 2012) and other fruits tional to the overall number of water molecules present in the tis-
(Mauro et al., 2016). The simultaneous shortening of the T2 of both sue. Therefore, the relative intensity will be a parameter of
compartments suggests therefore that in both cases exchangeable proportionality of the water mass distribution, and the distribution
protons of carbohydrates induced increase their contribution to of water will follow the next equation:
the overall protons populations upon PEF treatment, but in mini-
mum sense considering negligible. It is worth noticing that the xwj ¼ xw  rIj ð3Þ
T2 decrease was not proportional to the voltage applied, with
100 V/cm giving rise to marginal modifications, and the stronger where xwj is the water mass fraction of water group j (kgw in j/kgT)
treatments giving rise to similar and much higher T2 decreases. and xw is the water mass fraction (kgw/kgT). Thus, it is possible to
The T2 of each group does not converge to the same value, this sug- segregate the low mobility water molecules, adsorbed to the surface
gests that the liquid phase of samples are not mixed, remaining in of the cell matrix, from the rest of water molecules, as follows:
each compartment.
X ADS
w ¼ X w  rI
1
ð4Þ
It is possible to define a proportionality variable to describe the
relation between the intensity of each group of water molecules
where X ADS
w is the adsorbed moisture expressed in dry matter (kgw/
and overall measured intensity; this relation follows the next
kgdm) and Xw is the moisture expressed in dry matter (kgw/kgdm).
equation:
Fig. 4 shows the adsorbed moisture of kiwifruit samples at dif-
ferent PEF pre-treatment with regard to the surface water activity.
Ij
r Ij ¼ ð2Þ It is possible to observe that PEF pre-treatment produces an
IT increase of adsorbed moisture and a reduction of the water activ-
ity. This is because the electric field increases the surface electrical
where r Ij is the relative intensity of water group j (1: water adsorbed; energy of the cell membrane (protoplast and tonoplast) and the
2: external liquid phase, 3: vacuole liquid phase), Ij is the intensity of cell wall, increasing the surface free energy available for molecular
water group, and IT is the overall measured intensity. adsorption. This means that the number of layers of adsorbed

0.75 0.986

0.7
0.984

0.65
XwADS (kgwADS/kgdm)

0.982

0.6
0.98
aws

0.55

0.978
0.5

0.976
0.45

0.4 0.974
0 100 200 300 400
E (V/cm)
Fig. 4. Pre-treated fresh samples (without OD): where adsorbed moisture (j) and surface water activity (r) at different PEF (V/cm) pre-treatments.

Please cite this article in press as: Traffano-Schiffo, M. V., et al. Osmotic dehydration of organic kiwifruit pre-treated by pulsed electric fields and monitored
by NMR. Food Chemistry (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2017.02.046
6 M.V. Traffano-Schiffo et al. / Food Chemistry xxx (2017) xxx–xxx

0.85
XwADS(kgwADS/kgdm)

0.75

0.65

0.55

0.45

0.35

0.25

aws
0.15
0.93 0.94 0.95 0.96 0.97 0.98 0.99

Fig. 5. Adsorbed water content of equilibrated samples with regard to the surface water activity at different PEF pre-treatments, where experimental points (h) 0 V/cm, ( )
100 V/cm, ( ) 250 V/cm and ( ) 400 V/cm and calculated BET model (―) 0 V/cm, ( ) 100 V/cm, ( ) 250 V/cm and ( ) 400 V/cm.

0.016 27500
Xw0 Qc (J/mol)
(kgw/kgdm)
27000
0.015
26500
0.014
26000
0.013
25500

0.012 25000
E (V/cm) E (V/cm)
0.011 24500
0 100 200 300 400 500 0 100 200 300 400 500

Fig. 6. Relationship between the moisture monomolecular layer (Xw0) and the Isosteric heat (Qc) with the PEF pre-treatment.

water molecules increased, reducing the number of water mole- where Qc is the isosteric heat of sorption (kJ/mol), R is ideal gas
cules in the liquid phase. For this reason, increasing adsorbed constant (J/mol K) and T is absolute temperature (K).
moisture reduces water activity. Fig. 6 shows the moisture monomolecular layer and the isos-
The moisture and relative intensity were measured after the teric heat with regard the electric field applied throughout the tis-
treatment (non-equilibrated samples) and in equilibrium, thus, sue. As the figure shows, the electric field charges the surface of the
the adsorbed moisture of the non-equilibrated samples may tissue increasing its energy of adsorption or isosteric heat. This fact
undergo variations due to the internal water chemical potential produces an addition amount of water adsorbed and, therefore, a
gradients. Nevertheless, the adsorbed moisture of the equilibrated hydration of the tissue. This induces a reduction of water in the liq-
samples may be valid to obtain the sorption isotherm fitted by BET uid phase and changes in the transmembrane transport mecha-
model in the whole range of water activity. nisms that are shown in an increase of the water fluxes during
Fig. 5 shows the adsorbed moisture with regard to the surface the osmotic treatment.
water activity for equilibrated samples fitted by BET model. The Therefore, the use of NMR to quantify the water distribution in
correlation coefficients (R2) obtained adjusting the BET model for the tissue allows estimating the sorption isotherms of the absorbed
each PEF treatment (0, 100, 200 and 400 V/cm) were 0.90, 0.96, moisture in the whole range of water activities; this allows quan-
0.92, 0.91 respectively. Moreover, it is possible to observe how tifying the electrical energy stored in the tissue in form of energy of
the samples are sorted in function of the pre-treatment. adsorption.
From the adsorbed moisture fitting by BET model, it is possible
to obtain two parameters with physic sense: the moisture
monomolecular layer (Xw0) related with the minimum water 4. Conclusions
adsorbed in the surface of matrix and the C parameter related with
the isosteric heat by next equation (Labuza & Altunakar, 2007): NMR is a suitable technique for quantifying water molecules
according to their situation in the fruit tissue. This technique
Q c ¼ RT ln C ð5Þ allows us to obtain the adsorbed water and open the possibility

Please cite this article in press as: Traffano-Schiffo, M. V., et al. Osmotic dehydration of organic kiwifruit pre-treated by pulsed electric fields and monitored
by NMR. Food Chemistry (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2017.02.046
 M.V. Traffano-Schiffo et al. / Food Chemistry xxx (2017) xxx–xxx 7

to apply the BET model over the whole range of water activity. It Faridnia, F., Burritt, D. J., Bremer, P. J., & Oey, I. (2015). Innovative approach to
determine the effect of pulsed electric fields on the microstructure of whole
has been demonstrated that the application of electric fields across
potato tubers: Use of cell viability, microscopic images and ionic leakage
the plant tissue causes a storage of electrical energy that is con- measurements. Food Research International, 77, 556–564.
verted into free energy to attract and retain water molecules on Fito, P., Fito, P. J., Betoret, N., Argüelles, A., & Chenoll, C. (2011). Thermodynamic
the surface of membranes and cell walls. approach to equilibrium isotherms in salted structured food. Journal of Food
Process Engineering, 34, 623–638.
Labuza, T. P., & Altunakar, B. (2007). Water activity prediction and moisture
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Please cite this article in press as: Traffano-Schiffo, M. V., et al. Osmotic dehydration of organic kiwifruit pre-treated by pulsed electric fields and monitored
by NMR. Food Chemistry (2017), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.foodchem.2017.02.046