The stability of vegetable antioxidants in response to processing and cooking treatments may be affected
by the variety. However, the information available in the literature is very limited. In this work we
determined the influence of the eggplant variety (white e cv ‘Cloud Nine’ and purple e cv ‘Lucia’) on
pulp chlorogenic acid content (5-O-caffeoyl-quinic acid; CQA) and antioxidant capacity (AC) in response
to common pre-processing (cutting, salting or blanching), processing (air-vacuum- solar- and freezedrying,
slow- and fast-freezing) and cooking methods (microwaving, baking, grilling, steaming, boiling
or pressure cooking). Fresh purple ‘Lucia’ eggplants showed higher AC and CQA content (16%) than white
‘Cloud Nine’ fruit. Fruit pre-processing caused significant losses of AC, with the effect being higher in the
purple cultivar. Hot air- and sun-drying almost depleted CQA in both cultivars. In contrast, white eggplants
retained higher AC upon freezing and microwaving. Wet cooking methods (boiling and pressure
cooking) markedly increased fruit AC indicating that these preparation procedures improved antioxidant
extractability. The eggplant cultivar has a major influence in antioxidant retention during processing and
cooking; the white variety ‘Cloud Nine’ proved in general, more suitable for processing in terms of
antioxidant retention than the purple ‘Lucia’ genotype.