Cortezas de naranja comestibles: una aproximación al desarrollo de productos con valor agregado a partir de residuos agroidustriales

introduction. agricultural and livestock waste products have been considered as an environmental problem and their use has not been extensive, partly because their value is still unknown. one of the tasks food professionals have, is to generate alternatives to efficiently use that waste within a framework for developing new products with added value and sustainability. objective. to evaluate the feasibility of developing a product with functional characteristics from orange peels, by incorporating d and e vitamins to them, by the use of matrixes engineering through the vacuum impregnation technique. materials and methods. orange peels were debittered and impregnated under vacuum with an emulsion that had d and e vitamins. for designing the emulsion it was necessary to evaluate the response to the impregnation with a solution of saccharose at 45° brix, under the impregnation volumetric fraction (x), mass impregnation fraction (xmhd) and effective porosity (εiv), over the purpose of reaching d and e vitamins levels above 10% of the daily reference value in 50 g of peel. the samples were physically and chemically classified by color, texture and microstructure before and after the impregnation process. results. the evaluation of the color parameters (l, a* and b*) for the debittered peels and the debittered and impregnated peels, showed significant differences in comparison with fresh peels. conclusion. the statistic analysis of texture showed significant differences between treatments (fresh peels with no treatment, debittered peels impregnated with an isotonic solution and peels debittered and impregnated with a d and e vitamins solution).