Conventional thermal food processing techniques such as cooling (Hu & Sun, 2000; Sun & Brosnan, 1999; Sun & Zheng, 2006;Sun & Hu, 2003;Wang & Sun, 2001, 2002), freezing (Li & Sun, 2002) and drying (Delgado & Sun, 2002; Cui, Xu & Sun, 2004; Sun &
Woods, 1993, 1994a, 1994b, 1994c, 1997; Sun & Byrne, 1998, Sun,
1999) can ensure food safety and extend food shelf life, however
they can also cause losses in nutrients. Therefore, in response to
consumers demand, research activities have been increased on
using non-thermal technologies (NTT) to produce safe foods with
minimal damage to nutritional and sensory properties (Artiguez &
Maranon, 2014; Caminiti et al., 2012; Fonteles et al., 2013; Misra et
al., 2014; Pala & Toklucu, 2013; Sen & Mutlu, 2013; Yang,
Mwakatage, Goodrich-Schneider, Krishnamurthy, & Rababah,
2012). Among NTT, sonication and PEF have attracted particular
attention due to their simplicity, environment friendliness, economy,
consistency and high efficiency for the determination of
bioactive compounds and microbial decontamination. Sonication is
a novel technique that has been widely studied for enhancing food
processes (Delgado, Zheng & Sun, 2009; Kiani, Sun & Zhang, 2013;
Li & Sun, 2002; Sun and Li, 2003; Tao, García & Sun, 2013; Zheng &
Sun, 2006), which can also be used to improve the quality of fruit
juices (Aadil, Zeng, Han, & Sun, 2013; Dubrovic, Herceg, Jambrak,
Badanjak, & Dragovic-Uzelac, 2011). Similarly, pulsed electric field
(PEF) (Liu, Zeng, Sun, & Han, 2014; Lin, Zeng, Yu, & Sun, 2012;
Wang, Zeng, Sun, Han, 2014; Wang, Guan, Yu, Zeng, Liu, Yuan, &
Xu, 2011; Zeng, Han, & Zi, 2010) attained much research attention
in minimizing the loss of nutrients, color, flavor, taste, and inactivating
micro-organisms and enzymes due to the absence of heat