Ultrasonication in seafood processing and preservation: a comprehensive review

Abstract

Seafood is widely consumed across the globe due to its high-quality proteins, omega-3 fatty acids, vitamins, and minerals. They are highly perishable in nature due to their moisture content and nutrients enabling oxidative reactions and rapid growth of micro-organisms. To bring seafood from the sea to dinner table either chilling or freezing is required to maintain nutritional and organoleptic properties. This would lead to increased energy consumption, spending and green house gas emissions. Due to this the seafood industries are looking for a novel non-thermal food processing technique as a pretreatment. In this review ultrasound as a promising pretreatment technology used in-combination with different treatments in seafood is explored. Ultrasound demonstrates various key features such as increased process efficiency, effective microbial inactivation, improved quality, minimization of process stages, keeping desired quality attributes such as texture, nutrition, organoleptic properties intact along with enhanced shelf life. The current status and recent research findings on the influence of ultrasound on the physiochemical (color, texture, pH, and moisture content) and nutritional qualities of seafood are comprehensively discussed. The energy required and ideal operating conditions of the ultrasound for microbial inactivation of various seafood are also discussed. The positive outcomes of ultrasound pretreatment demonstrated a high potential for ensuring microbiological safety with a minimum alteration in nutritional and organoleptic properties of seafood products.

Keywords

• Processing
• Seafood
• Non-thermal
• Ultrasound
• Ultrasonication
• Preservation