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ABSTRACT
The changes in density and porosity and the microstructural development of apple tissue throughout the equilibration in osmotic treatments were analyzed for different osmotic solution concentrations. The effect of vacuum impregnation of the sample with the osmotic solution, before the osmotic treatment was also studied. Two periods were differentiated in the process. For relatively short term treatments (24–48 h) cell walls shrunk or separated from plasmalemma because of the cell water loss while compositional pseudoequilibrium was achieved. Afterwards for long term treatments, a bulk flux of osmotic solution into the fruit tissue occurred in line with the relaxation of mechanical energy accumulated in the deformed cell wall matrix. So, the true equilibrium (chemical plus mechanical), achieved when no changes either in sample composition or weight occurred, implied cell wall sphericity and sample volume recovery. However, some degree of irreversibility was observed in cell wall recovery, especially for osmotic treatments at high concentration without previous vacuum impregnation of sample.
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