2.0 INTRODUCTION
Consumption of foods and beverages that do not have added preservative but able to have a longer shelf life has become very popular among the consumer. In order to improve the shelf life of a food product, adding natural food extracts that act as the antimicrobial are able to inhibit or supress the microbial growth (Martin et al 2009). Microbial growth, pH and the storage temperature are the important measure of the shelf life and quality of a food product (Fellers 1988; Simforian et al 2015). Microbial spoilage is the main reason that causes off flavours, changes in appearance of the juice and the degradation of vitamin C and they are the few important quality aspects in freshly squeezed orange juice (Martin-Diana et al 2009).
Most of the fruits have a general bacterial counts of 1 x 104 cm2 on their surfaces before being processed and cleaning (Reddy et al 2009). The greatest problem in the commercialised marketing of fresh squeezed orange juice is the short lifespan of their shelf life. Yeasts are the main organism in fresh squeezed orange juice because of the acidic environment, the few major genera include Candida, Dekkera, Saccharomyces, and Zygosaccharomyces. Fungi that can be isolated from fresh fruit and juices includes Asperigillus, Mucor …show more content…
Fruit juices has a pH range <4.5 which serve as a good hurdle for the growth of microorganism (Aneja et al 2014). The addition of the extracts did not affect the pH of the orange juice, but it could be possible that the extracts maintained the pH of the juice and hence, limiting the growth of some microorganism. The minimum pH for the growth of yeast and mould is 1.5, whereas for the aciduric bacteria is between pH 2.9-4.5 (Aneja et al 2014). This show that the low pH environment of the juice was not low enough to eliminate the growth of
Consumption of foods and beverages that do not have added preservative but able to have a longer shelf life has become very popular among the consumer. In order to improve the shelf life of a food product, adding natural food extracts that act as the antimicrobial are able to inhibit or supress the microbial growth (Martin et al 2009). Microbial growth, pH and the storage temperature are the important measure of the shelf life and quality of a food product (Fellers 1988; Simforian et al 2015). Microbial spoilage is the main reason that causes off flavours, changes in appearance of the juice and the degradation of vitamin C and they are the few important quality aspects in freshly squeezed orange juice (Martin-Diana et al 2009).
Most of the fruits have a general bacterial counts of 1 x 104 cm2 on their surfaces before being processed and cleaning (Reddy et al 2009). The greatest problem in the commercialised marketing of fresh squeezed orange juice is the short lifespan of their shelf life. Yeasts are the main organism in fresh squeezed orange juice because of the acidic environment, the few major genera include Candida, Dekkera, Saccharomyces, and Zygosaccharomyces. Fungi that can be isolated from fresh fruit and juices includes Asperigillus, Mucor …show more content…
Fruit juices has a pH range <4.5 which serve as a good hurdle for the growth of microorganism (Aneja et al 2014). The addition of the extracts did not affect the pH of the orange juice, but it could be possible that the extracts maintained the pH of the juice and hence, limiting the growth of some microorganism. The minimum pH for the growth of yeast and mould is 1.5, whereas for the aciduric bacteria is between pH 2.9-4.5 (Aneja et al 2014). This show that the low pH environment of the juice was not low enough to eliminate the growth of