High-intensity ultrasound processing of kiwifruit juice: Effects on the microstructure, pectin, carbohydrates and rheological properties

This study aimed to evaluate the influences of high-intensity ultrasound on the physiochemical properties of kiwifruit juice. Results reported high-intensity ultrasound processing significantly enhanced the color attributes, cloudiness, and sugars of kiwifruit juice. Further, the shear stress, apparent viscosity, storage and loss modulus was increased with the rise of processing time. However, a significant degradation in the nanostructure of water-soluble pectin and suspended particles in ultrasound treated kiwifruit juice was observed. In addition, ultrasound processing resulted in the rupture of cell wall causing the dispersion of the intracellular components into juice while higher damage in the cellular structure was observed by increasing the processing time. These structural changes reveal the physical mechanism of ultrasound in improving the rheological properties, color attributes, cloudiness, and water-soluble pectin of kiwifruit juice. Altogether these findings suggest that high-intensity ultrasound has an enormous potential to improve the physical properties of kiwifruit juice.