A novel electrochemical device for naringin quantification and removal from bitter variety of citrus fruits

Citrus fruits have been recognized as one of the most consumed fruits in terms of bioactive components but due to immediate bitterness (naringin bitterness) in its juice primarily affecting consumer seemliness. Here, a novel ion-exchange-based resistive sensor was fabricated using amberlite-IRA 400 Cl- on SiO2/Si substrate as a sensing layer for both selective detection and removal of naringin from citrus juice. The fabricated device was calibrated with a standard naringin solution. The result presented the accuracy of 94.5%, 3 × 10−4 mg/mL as lower limit of detection with a response time of 15–20s, findings were validated with HPLC also. Here, the Temkin sorption model was found to be suited to explain the naringin adsorption and the correlation coefficient (R2) is estimated as 0.96, exhibiting high adsorption properties of the sensing layer. The debittering time of citrus fruit juice was optimized to be 60s showing a significant reduction in naringin compound with a minimum loss of bioactive compounds. The sensing layer of the device was used up to 8 cycles without significant performance deterioration, demonstrating its excellent reusability. The green route of naringin detection and bitterness removal in citrus fruit promises potential application in the fruit industry.