Cobertura comestível a base de fécula de mandioca em mamão minimamente processado

Abstract

The search for healthy and fresh foods has been growing, with the consumption of minimally processed foods becoming popular. These foods, despite undergoing some processing, still preserve their characteristics as fresh products. Papaya of the Formosa cultivar is one of the most cultivated and consumed fruits in tropical and subtropical regions of the world, with great acceptability, and use in food diets due to its high nutritional and digestive value. In an attempt to increase the shelf life of these foods, the application of edible coatings can be efficient. Edible coatings are thin layers of edible materials applied to the surface of food to reduce gas exchange and excessive water loss or gain, to increase its shelf life. The starch extracted from cassava has characteristics for the development of films, as it forms films with a shiny and transparent appearance, favoring the appearance of the vegetables, not being sticky, and being easily removed with water, in addition to its low cost. The present work aims to apply cassava starch edible coating on minimally processed vegetables during their storage and to evaluate their efficiency through the analyzes of mass loss, soluble solids content, pH, titratable acidity, color, and water activity during the storage of fruits coated or not for 10 days under refrigeration. The coatings were of 2, 3.5, and 5% concentration of starch with one to three immersions of the samples in them. No significant difference within the treatments was found for pH and water activity values. For the other analyses, some experiments showed a statistically significant difference, but there was no pattern in the ranges evaluated in the experiments. Under the storage conditions and for the concentration ranges of the cassava starch solution (2, 3.5, and 5%) and the number of immersions evaluated, the application of the edible coatings was not advantageous in increasing the shelf life of the minimally processed fruits.