Shelf life predictive model for postharvest shiitake mushrooms

Multivariate Accelerated Shelf-Life Testing (MASLT) and Accelerated Shelf-Life Testing (ASLT) were employed to estimate the shelf-life of postharvest shiitake mushrooms. Weight loss, color, texture profile, phenolic content, malondialdehyde (MDA) content, total aerobic plate count, water status, and organoleptic attributes of shiitake mushrooms stored at 5, 10, or 15 °C for 15 d were determined. Univariate kinetic was used to establish shelf-life prediction using order kinetics combined with Arrhenius and Eyring equations. For the multivariate kinetics, the spatial compression of the dataset was performed via PCA to obtain the scores of the time-dependent components for further shelf-life assessment. The prediction values for 5, 10, and 15 °C storage obtained with univariate models were 13.36–27.75, 7.30–12.26, and 4.53–7.15 d, respectively, whereas the shelf-life estimations of 18.19, 10.56, and 6.21 d obtained with multivariate model agreed the organoleptic scores results better (relative error <20%). Thus, compared to ASLT, the MASLT method successfully provided more accurate estimation of shelf-life for shiitake mushrooms. • Low temperature retarded the deterioration of postharvest shiitake mushrooms. • Accelerated Shelf-life Testing was proposed in this research. • Univariate and Multivariate kinetic models for shelf-life prediction were established. • Univariate kinetic models were established with Arrhenius and Eyring equations. • Multivariate kinetic model was established with high accuracy to predict shelf life.