From freshness to preservation: insights into processing and storage impacts on purple passion fruit volatilome

Purple passion fruit is highly appreciated for its distinctive sweet flavour, low acidity, and aromatic profile, making it a desirable choice for fresh consumption and juice production. To ensure microbiological safety and extend shelf life, juice products typically undergo thermal pasteurization, which can alter their physicochemical properties and volatile composition, and ultimately impact consumer perception. However, the dynamics of the purple passion fruit volatilome, from fresh fruit to processed juice during storage, remain poorly understood. This study aimed to comprehensively characterize these transformations using an advanced analytical technique (two-dimensional gas chromatography coupled with time-of-flight mass spectrometry).

For the first time, the volatile profile of whole and halved fruits was investigated, leading to the identification of 80 previously unreported compounds. Furthermore, high-pressure processing was compared with thermal pasteurization in terms of its effects on juice quality parameters. The former better retained key attributes of fresh juice after 60 days of refrigerated storage, namely, total phenolic content (76.4% vs. 59.6%), antioxidant activity (34.8% vs. 2.8%), browning degree (18.7% vs. 56.7% increase), colour (ΔE = 7.99 vs. 15.5), and volatile profile integrity. These results were corroborated by the evaluation of the extension of several reactions (Maillard and Strecker reactions, and carotenoids, lipids and monoterpenic oxidative reactions).

Overall, this work provides novel chemical data that may help elucidate consumer perception of distinctive purple passion fruit characteristics at several stages of fruit consumption and provide a scientific basis for the application of high-pressure processing in producing minimally processed juices with improved preservation of sensory characteristics. © 2025 The Author(s). Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Society of Chemical Industry.