Vol. 11, Issue 8 (2022)

Author(s):
A Shivani Indumathi, G Sujatha, V Appa Rao, Rita Narayanan, CN Kamalarathnam, V Perasiriyan and A Serma Saravana Pandian

Abstract:
Human milk bank facilitates the collection of mother’s milk from the donor mother’s, pasteurizes and distributes to the needy neonates. In human milk banks, donor mother’s milk is holder pasteurized at 62.5 ℃ for 30 minutes. Heat sensitive vitamins, antioxidants, bioactive components, and nutritional values significantly deteriorate during pasteurization. Hence the present study was envisaged to process the donor mother’s milk using Pulsed electric field (PEF) technology - A novel non-thermal preservation method. The donor mother’s milk samples were collected from donor mothers in and around Koduveli villages and human milk bank attached to Institute of child health and Hospital for children, Chennai. The donor mother’s milk samples were subjected to different voltage gradients of 25kV/cm and 30kV/cm by varying the treatment time 3000 to 4500µs and number of pulses from 1200 to 1800 pulses. Total antioxidant activity and ascorbic acid content were analyzed immediately after PEF processing. The PEF processed mother’s milk samples were compared with holder pasteurized and raw mother’s milk samples. With the data obtained one way analysis of variance (ANOVA) was carried out and it was observed that there was highly significant difference (p<0.01) in total antioxidant activity and ascorbic acid content immediately after PEF processing when compared with holder pasteurization. About 90% of ascorbic acid was retained in PEF processed samples, whereas 43% of ascorbic acid was retained in holder pasteurized mother’s milk. The raw, holder pasteurized and PEF processed milk samples were stored at 5 ℃ to conduct storage studies. Storage studies revealed that highly significant difference (p<0.01) was observed in both ascorbic acid content and total antioxidant activity during the storage period.