The high solubility in water of ascorbic acid makes the inevitable
losses by leaching, associated to any of the blanching treatments
assayed, responsible for the reduction to a certain extent
of the content of this important vitamin. Taking into account the
content of vitamin C, the samples with the highest retention were
those subjected to conventional blanching at high temperature and
short times. With respect to samples subjected to US blanching
prior to drying by convection, the most striking feature was their
acceptable organoleptic quality, similar to that of carrots blanched
by different conventional methods. The statistical analysis of mass
spectral fingerprints gathered by the ChemSensor methodology allowed
the differentiation of samples with a similar composition
and/or blanching treatments, and indistinguishable for a taste panel
of semi-trained judges. These results underline the usefulness
of ChemSensor as a tool to classify processed carrot samples