EVALUATION OF PHYSICOCHEMICAL PARAMETERS AND CONTENT OF ANTHONCYANINS IN RESIDUAL BIOMASS OF MORA DE CASTILLA (Rubus glaucus Benth) IN DIFFERENT STORAGE CONDITIONS

In Colombia, residual biomass is generated in practically all the agribusiness production chains. The blackberry of Castilla (Rubus glaucus Benth) is a morphologically sensitive Andean climacteric berry with a short shelf life, which is widely accepted due to its organoleptic properties and its content of bioactive substances that give its characteristic color, in the supply chain generates waste that can reach up to 40%. In this sense, the residual biomass of blackberry from Castilla, could be used as a source of pigments. For this reason, in this study the fruit was evaluated during the post-harvest senescence stage as a function of time, evaluating physicochemical, bioactive and microbiological changes of the fruit from its commercial maturity to high degrees of over-ripening, under different storage conditions: 4 ± 0.5 °C, 20 ± 2 °C and room temperature (14 ± 5 °C), quantifying pH and acidity, total soluble solids content, measurement of instrumental color in the CIELAB space, and total anthocyanin content per the differential pH method (A.O.A.C. 2005.02), reporting the results in cyn-3-glu / 100 g.
It was observed that after 4 to 5 days of senescence of the fruit an increase of between 40 mg and 100 mg cyn-3-glu / 100 g is obtained, depending on the storage temperature, being 2 to 3 times greater than the content of molecules of anthocyanin origin with respect to the state of physiological maturity. This indicates that the synthesis of anthocyanins as pigments is linked to the synthesis of sugars, a phenomenon that continues in the senescence stage favored by the content of organic acids present in the vacuoles. These results show the possibility of taking advantage of the residual blackberry biomass of Castilla as a raw material for the extraction of natural dyes with antioxidant properties.