Exogenous Salicylic and Ascorbic Acids Delay Peel Enzymatic Browning and Improve Quality of Dried Figs Under Low-Temperature Storage

Dried figs undergo undesirable changes during storage, particularly browning reactions. An approach to this issue is using, separately, antioxidants such as ascorbic acid and salicylic acid as anti-enzymatic browning agents. The aforementioned chemical agents were tested at the concentrations 0.1, 0.2, and 0.3% during 6 weeks-storage at 4 °C, for dried figs sealed within polyethylene terephthalate bags. For both agents, the results demonstrated that a concentration of 0.3% lowered the browning index compared to the control by 55 and 54%, respectively. Compared to other concentrations, the same concentration suppressed polyphenol oxidase to 75 and 80%, respectively. A significant impact (p < 0.05), for both treatments, particularly at 0.3%, was obtained on dried figs quality by lowering the total phenols loss and antioxidant capacity loss during the storage period. The results of vibrational spectroscopy were able to confirm the same pattern of the polyphenols compared to those examined by UV-Visible spectrophotometry, revealing thus a decreasing absorbance. A similar tendency was revealed using integrated intensity around the phenols vibration within the region of 1175–940 cm-1, as the concentrations of anti-browning agents increased. Thus, pre-storage ascorbic and salicylic acids treatments at 0.3% on dried figs could be appropriate to delay enzymatic browning and quality loss and, therefore to extend their shelf-life.