Managing quality changes of green beans and carrots along storage with temperature fluctuations.

Freezing and succeeding frozen storage is one of the most efficient methods to preserve vegetables quality. However, frozen vegetables are often subjected to fluctuating temperatures due to poor cold chain control, leading to ice recrystallization and sublimation thus producing quality losses. This work aims to assess the relevant quality parameters: frost formation, drip loss and vitamin C levels during 12 months of frozen storage with temperature fluctuations. Here, frozen green beans and carrots were
stored in four different freezers: -8 ± 3, -12 ± 3, -18 ± 3 and -23 ± 3 °C. In each freezer, two compartments were formed to achieve different amplitudes of fluctuation: ± 0.1 and ± 2 °C. To incorporate the quality evolution kinetics, the experimental data were fitted to afirst order quality kinetics and predict the temperature dependency using Arrhenius model.