, 1993); this may explain the results obtained in the present study. A greater degradation of ascorbic acid in acerola pulp is observed using

high voltages because electrolysis and metal corrosion increase when high electric fields are applied, producing compounds that catalyze the degradation pathways of ascorbic acid in the presence of oxygen. The initial vitamin C content (CVTCi), the final vitamin C content (CVTCf) and the degradation percentage of each experiment are listed in Table 4. It can be observed from this table that the experiments conducted with higher voltages showed higher vitamin C degradation (DVTC). The maximum value of DVTC was 5% at a voltage of 200 V. For voltages lower than 160 V, the maximum degradation was 2.7%. Furthermore, the total vitamin C degradation was lower than the ascorbic acid degradation for all experiments. Table 5 presents the AA/DHA ratios for unpasteurized and pasteurized ERK pathway inhibitors samples. As can be seen, after pasteurization, the AA/DHA ratio changed; experiments conducted with lower voltages achieved AA/DHA ratios closer to those of the non-pasteurized samples than those conducted with higher voltages. The first

oxidation reaction (conversion of AA to DHA) probably happened faster than the subsequent reaction, which converts DHA into DCG, a compound that has no biological activity. This result indicates that, during heat treatment, more AA was oxidized to DHA than DHA was oxidized to DCG. As the compound DHA does exhibit biological activity, the total vitamin C degradation was lower than the ascorbic acid degradation. However, it is noteworthy that only AA has antioxidant activity and DHA is a pro-oxidant compound Molecular motor that Forskolin concentration can be easily converted into AA in the human body ( Gregory, 1996). The statistical analysis

for DVTC, presented in Table 3, shows that only the linear and the quadratic effects of VT were significant for DVTC at a 95% confidence level. VT positively influenced DVTC, indicating that an increase of VT caused an increase in DVTC. It is also possible to observe that higher VT promotes higher DVTC, independent of the solids content of the pulp. Pulps with solids content ranging between 2 and 8 g/100 g were pasteurized using a conventional heating process. The ascorbic acid and the vitamin C contents of pasteurized (P) and non-pasteurized (NP) acerola pulp samples are presented in Table 6. The NP pulp showed a total vitamin C content of 9.39 mg per 100 g of dry product and ascorbic acid content of 9.28 mg per 100 g of dry product. As can be seen, conventional pasteurization slightly decreased ascorbic acid and vitamin C levels of the samples, with degradation values ranging from 2.87 to 3.70%. The most diluted sample showed the highest degradation: 3.6% for ascorbic acid and 3.70% for vitamin C. Table 6 also shows the percentage of AA and DHA relative to the total content of vitamin C. Both, NP and P samples, showed similar percentages of AA and DHA.