title: Monitoring of phytochemicals in fresh and fresh-cut vegetables: a comparison.
abstract: Bearing in mind that fresh-cut market is currently the fastest growing subsector in the food industry, a comparison of the levels of phytochemicals in fresh and fresh-cut vegetables has been carried out. Thus, several families of phytochemicals, such as phenolic acids, isoflavones, flavones, flavonols and glucosinolates were determined in fresh and fresh-cut samples including tomato, carrot, grape, eggplant and broccoli. Both type of products have potential and similar beneficial properties, regarding its content as phytochemicals, except tomato, which should be consumed as fresh. Other factors such as commercial presentation (sliced, grated, diced) and storage conditions (temperature and light) were evaluated observing that in eggplant, the content of phenolic acids is statistically different depending on the presentation. On the other hand, the content of phytochemicals was higher when fresh-cut carrots were stored at 4°C regardless of the presence or absence of light. Multivariate analysis, based on cluster analysis was used as a first approach to distinguish between fresh and fresh-cut samples, obtaining good results except for eggplant and carrot.
authors.affiliation: Group Analytical Chemistry of Contaminants, Department of Chemistry and Physics, Research Centre for Agricultural and Food Biotechnology (BITAL), University of Almería, Agrifood Campus of International Excellence, ceiA3, E-04120 Almería, Spain.
authors.forename: María Isabel
authors.initials: MI
authors.lastname: Alarcón-Flores
authors.forename: Roberto
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Romero-González
authors.forename: José Luis
authors.initials: JL
authors.lastname: Martínez Vidal
authors.forename: Francisco Javier
authors.initials: FJ
authors.lastname: Egea González
authors.forename: Antonia
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Garrido Frenich
mesh_terms: D001937:Brassica / Q000737:chemistry; D018552:Daucus carota / Q000737:chemistry; D005511:Food Handling / Q000379:methods*; D061353:Food Storage; D018551:Solanum lycopersicum / Q000737:chemistry; D064209:Phytochemicals / Q000032:analysis*; D011786:Quality Control; D032323:Solanum melongena / Q000737:chemistry; D014675:Vegetables / Q000737:chemistry*
chemical_list: D064209:Phytochemicals
keywords: Food composition; Fresh vegetables; Fresh-cut vegetables; Phytochemicals; Storage conditions; UHPLC–MSMS