ABSTRACT
The aim of the work was to investigate the effect of ultrasound application during juice pressing. The impact on pressing yield and extraction of bioactive compounds during production of juice from strawberry, blackcurrant and raspberry was evaluated. Juice pressing was carried out after four kinds of mash pretreatment. The tested objects were heated to 55 °C, treated by ultrasound, and/or macerated with an enzyme. The obtained juices were analyzed for the content of bioactive compounds and compared to the 'Control' sample, which was the juice pressed without any pretreatment. Although the results presented here do not conclusively show that enzymatic maceration can be completely replaced by the use of ultrasound, in the case of strawberry and raspberry fruit, juice yield after ultrasound treatment increased almost as much as after enzymatic maceration. Additionally, in the case of raspberry fruit, the antioxidant activity of the juice samples was definitely improved when ultrasound was used. The results from this experiment also showed that it is possible to separate the effect of temperature from the effect of mechanical and chemical actions in ultrasound treatment.
