Aprovechamiento integral del aguacate Hass con síntomas de antracnosis : Optimización de la técnica de liofilización para la obtención de guacamole empleando enfriamiento rápido con nitrógeno líquido.

Abstract

Ecuador, with its tropical climate conditions, offers an ideal environment for avocado cultivation. However, a significant amount of avocados are discarded because they don’t meet the necessary conditions for commercialization. These discarded avocados are often utilized as organic fertilizer or animal feed. Nevertheless, there is potential to utilize these avocados through processes such as lyophilization of the pulp to obtain powdered products, thereby improving avocado transport or exportation and adding value to the industry. This study aims to analyze the characteristics of avocado pulp obtained through different cooling techniques such as conventional freezing and ultra-freezing at various lyophilization times, in order to optimize the techniques of the different treatments employed. Differences between the two applied treatments were measured in terms of bromatological characteristics, lipid profile, X-ray diffraction, and microscopic examination of lyophilized avocado pulp. Based on these characteristics, lyophilized guacamole was developed, which underwent microbiological analysis to assess product safety and sensory analysis to evaluate attributes and product acceptance. The analysis revealed that both the cooling method and lyophilization time impact avocado powder characteristics. Ultra-freezing generally better preserves avocado cell structure compared to conventional freezing, as observed through microscopy and X-ray diffraction. On the other hand, optimization of the process indicated that the best condition for preserving bromatological characteristics such as ash content (3.830%), proteins (4.490%), and fats (31.256%) is ultra-freezing with a lyophilization time of 69.818 hours. Finally, from the production of guacamole, it was found that traditional guacamole presents better characteristics in terms of attributes and preference compared to spicy guacamole.