Raman spectroscopy for monitoring carotenoids in processed Bunchosia glandulifera pulps

Raman spectroscopy is a rapid and non-destructive analytical technique that has found a growing interest in the characterization and quantification of microconstituents in foods. In this work, Raman spectroscopy was used to evaluate the carotenoids content of processed Bunchosia glandulifera, a native fruit from the Brazilian Atlantic Forest. The B. glandulifera pulps were dried in hot air at 65 and 85 degrees C, resulting in carotenoids degradation of about 75 and 80%, respectively. The degradation profile of carotenoids over time was analyzed by Raman spectroscopy, with and without the use of an internal standard (TiO2). The reproducibility of the analyses was evaluated by PCA of spectral data. PLS regression was applied for modelling the total carotenoids in B. glandulifera. Resulting models show the Raman data correlate with carotenoids content on samples resulting in a satisfactory coefficient of determination for all sets of samples.