HEAT DAMAGE EVALUATION DURING TOMATO PRODUCTS PROCESSING

To evaluate the efficiency of furosine as a heat damage index in tomat o products, its content was determined in each step of tomato pulp (9% dry matter) and tomato paste (31% dry matter) processing. Furosine le vels (mg/100 g protein) increased linearly as a function of heat treat ment severity, although the slopes of the two products differed becaus e of the different dry matter contents. The standardization of furosin e values on the basis of dry matter content [mg furosine/(g protein g dry matter)] highlighted an identical linear increase of furosine for both products. Hence, furosine appears to be a good heat damage index of tomato products, allowing the evaluation of both product quality an d processing technology. Furosine was also determined on several tomat o products collected from the Italian market, detecting values from 43 to 140 for tomato pulp, from 93 to 132 for tomato sauce, and from 220 to 468 mg/100 g protein for tomato paste.