**Author details**

*Modern Fruit Industry*

fruits were lost [69].

**4.4 Food processing**

probably due to their degradation.

42% loss in anthocyanin content, respectively.

antioxidant.

was found after 6 months of frozen storage [71]. However, when drying was preceded with osmotic dehydration, a small amount of anthocyanins in blueberry

Many fruit-based foods are processed into products such as beverages, baked goods or confectionaries. Processing and preservation methods, such as hot air drying, freezing/thawing, freezing/osmotic pretreatment and microwave drying, are popular techniques for blueberry fruit preservation [72]. The processing treatments that the fruit undergo may have a detrimental effect on their phytochemical

Regarding the influence of processing methods, the antioxidant capacity is decreased by food processing practices, such as heat or aeration [60]. There was a slight increase in anthocyanin content of the highbush blueberry fruit when processed at 20°C; however, there was no change in the oxygen radical absorbing capacity. A slight increase in total anthocyanin value after some thermal pretreatment processing was recorded [73]. Blanching of blueberries at 85°C for 3 min resulted in about 7% growth of anthocyanin. However, the anthocyanin content of thermally treated blueberries, osmodehydrated, or air dried at 70°C decreased by about 30% [74]. The amount of anthocyanins after freeze-drying is also lower

The antioxidant capacity of the blueberries was superior. The pomace exhibited

high activity, albeit lower than that of the fruit; however, after processing, the flour and the dried blueberries lost 66 and 46% of the original antioxidant activity, respectively [75]. The average anthocyanin contents of the fruits were moderate compared to other sources and species of blueberries. The pomace contains a large amount of anthocyanins, while the flour and dried blueberries exhibited a 32 and

**74**

Zofia Zydlik1 \*, Szymon Cieśliński1 , Van Chung Mai2 , Nesibe Ebru Kafkas3 and Iwona Morkunas4 \*

1 Department of Dendrology, Pomology and Nursery Production, Faculty of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Poznań University of Life Sciences, Poznań, Poland

2 Department of Plant Physiology, Faculty of Biological Sciences, University of Vinh, Vinh, Vietnam

3 Department of Horticulture, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Cukurova, Adana, Turkey

4 Department of Plant Physiology, Faculty of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Poznań University of Life Sciences, Poznań, Poland

\*Address all correspondence to: zofia.zydlik@up.poznan.pl; iwona.morkunas@gmail.com and iwona.morkunas@mail.up.poznan.pl

© 2019 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
