Ultrasonic and microwave treatment improved jujube juice yield

The methods to leaching juice from dried jujube using six treatments and some factors related with juice yield such as total soluble solids (TSS), pectinase activity, pectin contents, galacturonic acid, and the microstructure morphology of cell were investigated. Six treatments including natural leaching, ultrasonic, microwave, ultrasonic before microwave, ultrasonic after microwave, and pressing directly were applied to extract juice. The group which treating with ultrasonic before microwave displayed its total soluble solids (TSS) was 16 °Brix, which was 6.67% higher than that of natural leaching. And its total soluble solids (TSS) reached to equilibrium in 2 hr, which was faster than that of natural leaching. The mechanism of improving the production efficiency of juice yield using ultrasonic combined with microwave was explored accordingly. The content of pectin and galacturonic acid increased by 58.52% and 59.01%, respectively, which were the highest among all samples. The activity of pectinase was 9.71 μg/(h·g), which was significantly decreased 40.23% as compared to natural leaching. And the treated cells became shriveled and pitted, which led to the leakage of the contents of cell. Thus, the result showed that treating with ultrasonic before microwave displayed the best juice yield. Ultrasonic cooperate with microwave was an efficient method to leaching juice from dried jujube.