Effect of Alternative Preservation Steps and Storage on Vitamin C Stability in Fruit and Vegetable Products: Critical Review and Kinetic Modelling Approaches

Vitamin C (L-ascorbic acid) is a vital, water-soluble micronutrient that serves as a key indicator of nutritional quality in plant-based foods. Because humans cannot synthesize it, dietary intake is essential. However, Vitamin C is notoriously labile, degrading rapidly in response to temperature, oxygen, light, and pH. This paper provides a critical review of how traditional and novel preservation techniques—and their combinations—impact Vitamin C retention throughout the product lifecycle.

Traditional methods like thermal pasteurization, drying, and freezing are effective for microbial safety but often cause significant Vitamin C loss. To mitigate this, the food industry increasingly uses "hurdle technology," which combines multiple milder preservation steps. For example, osmotic dehydration or ultrasound pre-treatments can shorten the duration of subsequent thermal drying, potentially preserving more Vitamin C. However, these pre-treatments can also introduce new degradation risks, such as leaching of water-soluble vitamins into osmotic solutions or the formation of free radicals during sonication. The review emphasizes that the success of these integrated approaches depends on optimizing the specific sequence and intensity of each hurdle.

To move beyond qualitative assessments, the authors advocate for robust kinetic modelling. By mathematically describing the relationship between Vitamin C loss and environmental factors (temperature, moisture, oxygen), researchers can better predict shelf life. The paper contrasts traditional deterministic approaches (which provide single-point estimates) with modern stochastic models (which incorporate uncertainty and variability). These advanced models, often utilizing Monte Carlo simulations or Bayesian statistics, offer more realistic predictions of nutritional quality under the fluctuating conditions of real-world distribution chains.