abstract
In recent years there is a growing demand for healthy and safe food, without added preservatives or
synthetic antioxidants. In this regard, plant extracts have promising future due to their high contents of
bioactive compounds, especially in phenolic and polyphenolic compounds that exhibit antimicrobial and
antioxidant activities. For this reason, the plant extracts could form the basis of many applications,
including the preservation of fresh and processed foods. In this work, the methodology to obtain orange
peel extracts with high bioactive properties is presented. To adjust the extraction conditions, experimental
design and response surface methodology were applied to establish the optimum value of all the
experimental variables that have influence in the extraction system. Total phenolic contents and antioxidant
activity values were used as response parameter. The peel extracts, obtained with the proposed
methodology, exhibited a high content of phenolic compounds, high antioxidant and antimicrobial activity,
against Escherichia coli and Listeria innocua (in-vitro experiments). Finally, to demonstrate the
feasibility of the peel extracts, they were used as natural additive in apple juice reducing significantly
juice browning and the microbial load for both bacteria.