New preservation and detection technologies for edible mushrooms: A review.

Edible mushrooms are nutritious, tasty, and have medicinal value, which makes them very popular. Fresh mushrooms have a high water content and a crisp texture. They demonstrate strong metabolic activity after harvesting. However, they are prone to textural changes, microbial infestation, and nutritional and flavor loss, and they therefore require appropriate post-harvest processing and preservation. Important factors affecting safety and quality during their processing and storage include their quality, source, microbial contamination, physical damage, and chemical residues. Thus, these aspects should be tested carefully to ensure safety. In recent years, many new techniques have been used to preserve mushrooms, including electrofluidic drying and cold plasma treatment, as well as new packaging and coating technologies. In terms of detection, many new detection techniques, such as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR), imaging technology, and spectroscopy can be used as rapid and effective means of detection. This paper reviews the new technological methods for processing and detecting the quality of mainstream edible mushrooms. It mainly introduces their working principles and application, and highlights the future direction of preservation, processing, and quality detection technologies for edible mushrooms. Adopting appropriate post-harvest processing and preservation techniques can maintain the organoleptic properties, nutrition, and flavor of mushrooms effectively. The use of rapid, accurate, and non-destructive testing methods can provide a strong assurance of food safety. At present, these new processing, preservation and testing methods have achieved good results but at the same time there are certain shortcomings. So it is recommended that they also be continuously researched and improved, for example through the use of new technologies and combinations of different technologies. © 2023 Society of Chemical Industry.

Intensive pulsed light pretreatment combined with controlled temperature and humidity for convection drying to reduce browning and improve quality of dried shiitake mushrooms.

BACKGROUND: The change of surface color caused by browning during the drying process of shiitake mushrooms seriously affects its market circulation. Intensive pulsed light (IPL) as a non-heat-treatment method can reduce enzyme activity by changing the enzyme structure. Therefore, in this study, the use of IPL pretreatment before drying was aimed to reduce the adverse reactions caused by the browning reaction during the drying processing of shiitake mushrooms. RESULTS: Shiitake mushrooms pretreated with 25 pulses of IPL energy of 400 J reduced the initial polyphenol oxidase enzyme activity, the browning index, and browning degree values by 42.83%, 43.02%, and 47.54% respectively. The IPL pretreatment enhanced the polysaccharides and reducing sugars contents and it reduced 5-hydroxymethylfurfural generation in the dried shiitake mushrooms. The pretreatment also improved the surface color, the antioxidant activity, and retained the umami taste characteristics in the dried shiitake mushroom. CONCLUSION: The IPL pretreatment combined with controlled temperature and humidity for convection drying could be a suitable method to improve the quality of dried shiitake mushrooms. Therefore, this study provides a new pretreatment method for materials that are prone to browning during drying. © 2021 Society of Chemical Industry.