Tropical fruits are widely accepted by consumers, and important sources of antioxidant compounds. Acerola, known to have high vitamin C levels, is also rich in anthocyanins and carotenoids. The purpose of this work was to evaluate the stability of the total carotenoids, total anthocyanins and ascorbic acid of the acerola sweetened tropical juice produced by the Hot Fill (glass bottles) and aseptic (packings carton) process during 350 days of storage in similar conditions of trade (28ºC ± 2ºC). It was observed that there were not losses of total anthocyanins for the process Hot Fill, however for the aseptic process a reduction of 86.89% of the initial values was observed. The values of total corotenoids stayed unaffected in the samples of the aseptic process, while in the one of the Hot Fill there was a reduction of 12.5%. A reduction in the values of ascorbic acid of 23.61% was observed for the Hot Fill process and 35.95% for the aseptic process.
Acerola juice; carotenoids; anthocyanins and ascorbic acid
