Advances in Peeling Techniques for Tomato:A Comprehensive Review

ABSTRACT

Peeling is a crucial part of the tomato deep processing procedure, and the choice of peeling method directly affects the quality of peeling. As far as the conventional peeling methods are concerned, They are still energy and water-intensive and have adverse effects on the environment. The conventional peeling methods often used in the field of tomato peeling were reviewed in this article, including manual, mechanical, chemical, or steam, and the current novel peeling methods, such as enzymatic peeling, pulse electric field peeling, infrared peeling, high-humidity hot air impingement blanching peeling, ohmic heating-assisted lye peeling, flame-catalytic infrared peeling, ultrasonic-assisted lye peeling and CO₂ laser-assisted lye peeling. The mechanism, advantages and disadvantages, and applications, of different peeling methods are also summarized and analyzed. In contrast, the novel peeling method excelled in reducing the use of lye and improving the quality of peeled tomatoes. The retention of nutrients such as lycopene, ascorbic acid, and total phenols is extremely dependent on the high texture retention and low peeling loss of peeled pulp. Therefore, the mechanism of peeling and texture preservation after peeling are current research hotspots in the industry. In addition further research should accelerate the scale-up and commercial applicability of the new technology.

KEYWORDS:

• Peeling technology
• novel peeling methods
• tomato
• mechanism
• applications

Acknowledgments

The authors are appreciated to the financial support offered by the by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32072174), the Social Development General Project of Jiangsu (BE2020776), and Jiangsu Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Fund (CX (21) 2026, CX (20) 3168).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Jiangsu Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Fund [CX (21) 2026, CX (20) 3168]; National Natural Science Foundation of China [32072174]; Social Development General Project of Jiangsu [BE2020776]