Chien-hao Chen, Po-Hua Wu, Diana Lo, Yun-Hsun Hsiang, Ming-Chang Wu4
Lemon is an important crop in Pingtung (Southern Taiwan), and its price is always low due to the supply exceeds the demand in productive periods, so it is necessary to develop diversified products of lemon. There have plenty of commercial plum essence products in the current market, but the development of lemon essence is still unexplored in the laboratory and in the industry. In this study, lemon is processed by the procedure such as squeezing, residue discard and highly concentrated, and obtain the sticky dark black product. Interestingly, the mumefural, a compound generally recognized having the function of enhancing immune system, was formed during the lemon essence processing. The mumefural content will be increased gradually by increasing heating time with the highest mumefural was found at 10 hr heating time, but the content was decreased at 12 hr heating. It is speculated that prolonged over-heating time will lead to the degradation of mumefural. However, the longer the concentration time, lemon essence had the stronger antioxidant activity, especially in 10 and 12 hours. This finding can be further collaborated with antioxidant compound determination.
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