RESUMO
The aim of this research was to evaluate the storage stability (5⯰C), and microbial modeling, of Rubi red grapefruit (Citrusâ¯×â¯paradisi) juice treated with ultraviolet-C (UV-C) light (0, 10 and 20â¯min), alone or in combination with trans-cinnamaldehyde (trans-CAH) (0, 25 and 50⯵g/mL). A 32 factorial design was used and data modeled with the Weibull, Modified Gompertz and Logistic models. A response surface model was used to evaluate the effect of modeling parameters for suggesting the optimum treatment conditions. Treated and some untreated juice lasted up to 9â¯days without physicochemical and microbial changes. At the higher combination of UV-C light and trans-CAH, the microbial load of grapefruit juice was maintained below 100â¯CFU/mL up to 15â¯days. For mesophiles, the three predictive models indicated that the parameters n and Nmax decreased and the parameters λ and tc increased as the combination of UV-C light and trans-CAH increased. The response surface modeling of the parameters obtained by the predictive models showed acceptable correlation for mesophiles (R2â¯=â¯0.815-0.977) but not for yeasts (R2â¯=â¯0.618-0.815). The three predictive models showed that, the concentration of trans-CAH had more effect on stopping the microbial growth than the UV-C light treatment.