ABSTRACT
Yellow mombin (Spondias mombin, L.) is a tropical fruit that presents exotic taste and aroma, being source of carotenoids and phenolics compounds. It presents a good potential for processing, despite some restriction related with the presence of high amounts of peroxidase (POD) and pectinmethylesterase (PME) which can cause sensory changes in the product. This work addresses the evaluation of changes in POD and PME enzyme activity during the traditional industrial processing used to produce tropical juices in Brazil. The enzyme activity was determined after the main steps of the processing: fruit pulping, homogenization and pasteurization. Although both enzymes presented significant activity loss during processing, the final product showed residual activity for PME (25 %) and POD (2.5 %). PME showed to be more thermal resistant than POD in yellow mombin juice. Considering the compounds with antioxidant activity, yellow mombin presented high amounts of carotenoids and phenolics when compared to other tropical fruits such as passion fruit and pineapple. Although the processing of the fruit resulted in significative phenolic loss, the carotenoids content was not affected significantly by the processing.
