Tocopherols profile of three Castanea sativa varieties submitted to electron beam irradiation
Conference Paper
Overview
Overview
abstract
Chestnuts are widely appreciated fruits all over the world, being China the biggest producer and
Portugal standing in fourth place. The Trás-os-Montes region is responsible for 82% of our
nation's production [1). Electron beam irradiation has been tested as a postharvest phytosanitary
treatment in chestnuts since the main fumigation agent, Methyl Bromide, was banned by the
European Union in 2010 due to environmental concerns and danger to public health (2). The
results seem promising, surpassing the main drawbacks that other postharvest treatments still
display for chestnut treatment. Tocopherols, constituents of vitamin E, are potent antioxidants in
the human body, and the only lipid soluble chain breaking antioxidants. They can act
independently or by regenerating vitamin C, which is also an antioxidant. The health benefits of
antioxidants have also been reviewed by our research group [3). Recently, we have been studying
the effects of electron beam and gamma irradiation in the nutritional and antioxidant parameters of
chestnuts [4). Our previous findings reveal that storage time plays a more important role in
tocopherols degradation when compared to irradiation doses. In this work, we attempted to
generalize the application of electron beam irradiation to three chestnut varieties (Longal, Judia and Cota), evaluating the effects on tocopherols profile obtained by High Performance Liquid Chromatography coupled to a fluorescence detector. α- and δ-Tocopherols were not affected in none of the analyzed varieties, while γ-tocopherol was higher in irradiated samples for Longal and
Cota and lower for Judia. Despite these slight variations, they were not significant and corroborate our previous findings, in which storage time had a major role in tocopherols degradation than the irradiation process.
FCT and COMPETE/OREN/EU (ON.2/QREN/EU Project no.13198/2010; CIMO strategic project
PEst-OE/AGR/UI0690/2011 and A.L. Antonio grant- SFRH/PROTEC/67398/2010}.
