**9. Cold plasma technique (CPT)**

This is a nonthermal technique that has many applications in food industry. It reduces the pathological load and deactivates the enzymatic reactions thus enhances the shelf life. The most of research work has been carried out to find out the effect of CPT on microbial decontamination rather than the quality aspect [65]. Plasma generates an electromagnetic energy which ionizes the gases, however, the energy generates by the CP is different for different purposes like packaging, plastic and polymer industries. In food technology, it is widely used for surface decontamination that is achieved by placing the foods in strong electric zone resulting generates of reactive gas species that could alter the quality and sensory attributes [65]. CP technique has great impact on the quality of fruits and vegetables. It increase the sucrose content whereas reduces the glucose and fructose and this might be

attributed to high degree of polymerization in cashew apple juice (@ PE-100, 80 kHz, N2, 10–50 mL/min, 5–15 min, 30 kPa) [65, 66]. CP has no significant effect on ascorbic acid content of the fruits and vegetables in many fruits like kiwi [67].

It was observed that exposure of CP increases the anthocyanin content in some fruit juices such as sour cherry (Garofulić et al. [68]), pomegranate juice (at 25 kHz, Ar, 0.75–1.25 dm3 /min for 3–7 min) Kovačević et al. [69]. CP treatment (dielectric barrier discharge, at 15 kV for 10–20 min) has also helpful in color retention and reduction of darkened area formed during storage of cut kiwifruit, though an immediate effect of CP treatment was slight loss of pigment which might be due to the degradation of pigments like chlorophyll and anthocyanin (Ramazzina et al. [67]). Won et al. [70] reported that CP treatment (at 2.45 GHz, 900 W, 1 L/min, 0.7 kPa, N2, He, N2 + O2 (4:1) for 10 min) increases the antioxidant activity, total phenolic content and also inhibits *Penicillium italicum* in mandarin.
