Apple Peel Extracts As Preservation Solution to Maintain the Quality of Fresh-Cut Apples

In recent years, a wide variety of minimally processed (MP) fruits and vegetables has been worked up together with the development of synthetic additive-free or natural additive-based preservation techniques. As apple is one of the worldwide most widely consumed fruit, the objective of this research was threefold: (i) to verify the effectiveness of an innovative multi-step green process to recover high-added-value antioxidant extracts from organic apple peels. Two different extraction solvents, water or ethanol at 10%, were used on apple peels; (ii) to evaluate the antimicrobial activity of extracts on MP apples; (iii) to evaluate the ability of the extracts to maintain the physicochemical attributes of fresh cut apple and assess their potentiality as alternative preservative media in comparison with traditional ones, butylated hydroxytoluene (BHT) and citric acid (CA). The extract from 10% ethanol significantly maintained fresh cut apple quality parameters (i.e., browning and texture) similarly to BHT and CA, when compared to untreated fresh cut fruits. Moreover, the apple peel extracts showed an interesting antimicrobial effect to reduce the growth of most relevant pathogenic and deteriorating both positive and negative gram bacteria.