Abstract
Unlike the animal cell, the plant cell is framed by a cell wall as an overlayer of the cell
membrane. Organelle which in cytoplasm such as vacuole is involved by the cell membrane
and cell wall. Antioxidant materials like flavonoids are mainly stored in the vacuole.
Therefore, these structural attributes would relate to the elution of intracellular
antioxidant materials during processing or the enzyme accessibility during digestion. In this
study, the effect of cell disruption percentages of citrus peel powder as a simulated model
of plant-based materials on the elution of intracellular constituents was investigated.
The flavedo layer of citrus peel was flaked using grater, freeze dried, pulverized using stone
mill and sieved to separate particle size. These various size powders were regarded as a
simulated tissue model which consist of various percentages of disrupted cell. The diameter
of cells and powdered particles was measured by extrapolation of the microscopic image
and averaged. The various size powders were soaked in distill water, ethanol and hexane,
respectively, for 30 minutes. The absorbance spectra of soaked liquid were measured to
examine the degree of elution from powders. The result showed that the absorbance at all
range of visible light spectra decreased with increase in powder diameter. This tends to
follow the approximate exponential decrease as shown by the changes in cell disruption
percentage. Therefore, this also figured out that an increase of disrupted cell ratio would
indicate comparatively higher elution from the powder, since the percentage of the
disrupted cell connected to powder diameter. Thus, it was suggested that the structural
attribute of cell-based plant tissue could connect to the elution property of intracellular
materials. This would relate with postprandial nutritional properties of plant-based foods.
