The possibility to increase antioxidant activity of celery root during osmotic treatment

Osmotic treatment of celery root was studied in two osmotic sol­utions (sugar beet molasses and a ternary solution of water, sucrose and salt), at three temperatures (20, 35 and 50 °C), and three different immersion periods (1, 3 and 5 h), at atmospheric pressure. The aim was to examine the influence of the type of the used hypertonic agent, the temperature and the immersion time on the water loss, solid gain, water activity, dry matter content, anti­oxid­ant activity (expressed by DPPH ) and colour attributes (described by CIELAB coordinates L *, a * and b *). During the experiments, the antioxidant activity of celery root was increased in sugar beet molasses, while the DPPH value tended to decrease in the ternary solution. The experimental data of osmotic dehyd­ration was used for PCA modelling. The standard scores analysis revealed that the optimum process parameters were gained with an immersion time of 5 h and a temperature of 35 °C.