Effect of drying techniques on the retention of antioxidant activities of Saskatoon berries

<p>The main objective of this research was to compare the retention of antioxidant activity and total anthocyanin content of Saskatoon berries dried by freeze drying, microwave-vacuum drying, thin layer hot air drying and vacuum drying. Antioxidant activity of berry samples was determined by DPPH radical scavenging and ABTS radical scavenging, and the pH differential method was used to determine total anthocyanin content of the berry samples. The results showed that the freeze dried Saskatoon berries exhibited the highest retention of anthocyanin and antioxidant activity among the dried samples, followed by microwave-vacuum dried berries, thin layer hot air dried berries and vacuum dried berries. There were significant differences between the berry samples at P&lt;0.05. DPPH radical scavenging and ABTS radical scavenging were correlated linearly with an R² value of 0.99 at P&lt;0.05 showing their effectiveness for the determination of the antioxidant activity of the Saskatoon berries. However, the DPPH radical scavenging assay was more effective than the ABTS radical scavenging assay. The results also showed that antioxidant activity of the berries was highly correlated with the total anthocyanin content of the fruit. The reduction of anthocyanin in dried berry samples was linearly correlated with the reduction of DPPH radical scavenging with an R² value of 0.97 at P&lt;0.05 and, also, linearly correlated with the reduction of ABTS radical scavenging with an R² value of 0.88 at P&lt;0.05.