Investigation on the effect of thermal sterilization versus non-thermal sterilization on the quality parameters of jujube juice fermented by Lactobacillus plantarum.

This study aimed to evaluate the jujube juice treated by four different sterilization treatments as substrates for producing a probiotic beverage fermented by Lactobacillus plantarum (L. plantarum): sterilization by autoclaving (SA at 0.1 MPa,121 °C, and 20 min), pasteurization (PS at 85 °C/30 min), cold plasma sterilization (CPS at 700 W/120 s) and pulsed strong light sterilization (PLS at 1.0 Hz, 600 J, and 10 times), while jujube juice without sterilization treatment used as control (CK). The results showed that the growth ability of L. plantarum in jujube juice was not affected by different sterilization treatments. After SA and PS treatment, the particle size of jujube juice increased by 440.51% and 222.29%, respectively, and the reducing sugar content decreased by 33.83% and 24.51%, respectively. Compared with SA and PS, PLS and CPS were beneficial to improve the stability of jujube juice, and tartaric acid content in jujube juice was significantly increased after CPS treatment. There was no significant difference in sensory and nutritional quality between PLS treated jujube juice and control, and the color of PLS treated jujube juice was significantly better than that of the other three sterilization treatments. The research indicated that PLS treatment could be a prospective sterilization method applied in the processing of fermented jujube juice. Supplementary Information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s13197-022-05358-8. © Association of Food Scientists & Technologists (India) 2022.