Impact of cold plasma processing on the phytochemical profiles and main bioactive compounds of antioxidant dietary plants: Eruca sativa Mill., Fragaria × ananassa & Cucumis melo L.

Nowadays the consumers awareness about the consumption of healthy and safe food products has been increased. For this, experts in the food industry are continuously searching for products with prolonged shelf life without affecting or even improving the food quality. Consequently, novel processing methods are gaining popularity to obtain high- quality products without negatively affecting functional stability, nutritional or sensorial properties; a recently introduced approach is cold plasma (CP) processing. Many studies have been published on the food processing by CP, focused mainly on the potentials of CP technology for microbial decontamination, the induced chemical, physical and physiological quality attributes. However, the impact of this novel technology on the main bioactive compounds presents in the processed food, especially plant-based foods, is still lacking in the available literature. Consumers can not directly assess the nutritional or functional composition of food products; at the same time, they can evaluate external attributes (appearance and textural quality) or eating quality. Instead, they rely on information available in specialized publications and databases or conveyed in outreach documents or in labelling. Consequently, this work will emphasize how CP processing impact the biologically active compounds present in different treated samples. Strawberry, melon and rocket-salad leaves were selected to be under study for their high nutritional values, being rich in various phenolic compounds and vitamins, in addition to their antioxidant capacities and potential in the nutraceutical and functional food market. Qualitative and quantitative comparisons were performed between untreated, and CP treated samples using selected bioactive compounds, focusing mainly on the total phenolic content and individual phenolic profile of each sample, antioxidant activity, major vitamins (C, B2 & B3) and other secondary and primary metabolites. The present work shows that the interaction of plasma-reactive species with plant food components depends mainly on various processing conditions. Preserving and improving the phenolic profile and vitamins content are among the most promising potentials of cold plasma. Even so, a thorough insight on the impact of cold plasma on functional and bioactive food constituents is still a subject of imminent research.