Maillard reaction markers in cornflake production. Influence of process conditions and formulation. Farroni,

FARRONI, A; LAGORIO, M.G.; BUERA, M.P.

Congreso; 11th INTERNATIONAL CONGRESS ON ENGINEERING AND FOOD 11th ICEF 2011.?Food Process Engineering in a Changing World?,; 2011

Maillard reaction is responsible of colour and flavour generation during cornflake production processes. The aim of this work was to study physical and chemical changes occurring during corn flakes processing in order to analyse their use as potential markers for controlling the different industrial stages and product quality. Samples from four selected industrial process stages were provided by a local breakfast cereal manufacturer. Surface colour and fluorescence, Maillard reaction intermediates, brown pigments and fluorophores concentration were measured. Fluorescence development and the Maillard reaction product CML can be regarded as useful indicators during steam cooking, since they change sensitively during this stage. On the other side, the colour function h?ab and HMF are suitable markers during flaking and toasting stages.  The analysis by principal components (PCA) of all the data involved confirmed that the changes in visual appearance are better represented by reflectance measurements, while those dependent on the chemical composition of the samples, or concentration of intermediates are not correlated to the chemical markers, especially due to shape and surface texture changes. A better correlation between chemical markers and reflectance measurements was obtained when samples were powdered and compressed. These measurements, however did not reflected visual appearance of the samples.