Texture degradation and color fading of frozen strawberries consider to be a serious
problem affect their quality. Therefore, in the present study the fresh strawberry immersed in various
concentrations of citric acid and calcium lactate alone or in combination for 5 min. and kept at
low temperature (5 _C) for overnight before freezing or frozen directly for controlling these defects.
The obtained results declared that pretreatment with citric acid dip obviously enhanced the retention
of ascorbic acid and total anthocyanins content and lowered the browning index while Calcium
lactate maintained the texture by reducing the drip loss and increasing the firmness after thawing.
The precooling treatment did not show any enhancer affect in the quality indices of frozen berries.
Compared to the other treatments, the use of 0.4% citric acid – 1% Ca lactate combination dip
achieved better quality attributes, including reduction in drip loss and enhancement of firmness,
retention of ascorbic acid and anthocyanin content in addition to improving in color attributes.