Tomato is one of the most popular and widely grown
vegetables in the world (Nisha et al. 2010). In fact, tomato
is one of the most important vegetables for the food
industry, and its product consumption is large and widely
included in human diet. The rheological characterization of
tomato products is important not only for unit operations
design but for process optimization and high-quality
products assurance.
In fact, many works have been published regarding
tomato products' rheological characterization. However,
data presented in literature are very variable (Bayod et al.
2007) and concentrated only in steady-state shear stress
measurements. Many works just considered one condition
measurement (just apparent viscosity evaluation) or empiric
methods evaluation (as the Bostwick consistometer).
Moreover, it is important to notice that viscoelastic
characterization of tomato products is still scarce (Sánchez
et al. 2002; Valencia et al. 2004)