Acerola (Malpighia emarginata D.C.) is a widespread occurrence in the Espírito Santo’s State, in Brazil, and has been designed mainly for the manufacture of juices. Associated with nutritional and functional aspects of the fruit, acerola have a high throughput and a strong potential for industrialization.
Agricultural residues are generated in juices and fruit pulps production processing. In some cases, the waste of certain fruit, bark and seed, presents higher antioxidant activity than the pulp fractions of it.
Aiming reusing and counting up value to the product, calling into evidences that the agro-industrial residue cultivars of acerola has a high concentration of flavonoids and total polyphenol, it would consign them to the production of ethanol and glycol extracts. These could be used in the production of cosmetics and this fact would contribute to the technological strengthening of Espírito Santo’s State industry.
Thus, given the amount of agro-industrial waste generated by laboratory simulation, possibility of reuse and phytochemical properties, the project had a proposal to evaluate and determine chemical parameters of agro-industrial waste product of five genetic varieties of acerola in different states of maturation.
Analyzing of four stages of maturation, good amounts of total polyphenols were found. For seeds varying between 87 ± 3 to 102 ± 7 µg of galic acid equivalecy and for peels and pulp was around 116 ± 2 to 124 ± 9 µg of galic acid equivalency. In which its visible that peels and pulp has higher amounts, however is completely valid on seeds, those which are the bulk of waste in fruits production processing in the State of Espírito Santo in Brazil.