ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Sustain. Food Syst.
Sec. Sustainable Food Processing
This article is part of the Research TopicSustainable Food Processing: Valorization of Agro-Waste-Derived Proteins, Starch, and Bioactives, and Seaweeds for Food Packaging and Product InnovationView all articles
Comparative Analysis of Cellular Structures in Fresh and Dehydrated Tropical Fruits Using Confocal Microscopy
Provisionally accepted
- 1University of Magdalena, Santa Marta, Colombia
- 2Instituto Politecnico Nacional, Mexico City, Mexico
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Confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM) was employed to quantitatively evaluate the dehydration-induced microstructural and biochemical transformations in four tropical fruits: Hass avocado, sugar mango, papaya, and Honey Gold pineapple. This work constitutes one of the first systematic CLSM-based comparisons between fresh and dehydrated tropical fruit tissues, providing novel insights into protein localization, matrix organization, and conformational stability during drying. Quantitative analysis revealed significant increases in fluorescence intensity for avocado (31%), mango (28%), and pineapple (35%), showing strong correlations with protein enrichment determined by proximate composition (R² > 0.92). In contrast, papaya exhibited a 22% decrease in fluorescence despite higher protein content, suggesting conformational rearrangements that limited fluorophore accessibility. A three-way ANOVA (fruit species × temperature × air velocity) confirmed that fruit species had a highly significant effect on both fluorescence intensity and protein content (p < 0.0001), while temperature exerted a moderate influence (p = 0.0112), and air velocity showed no significant effect (p = 0.13). CLSM fluorescence quantification was further validated through compositional and statistical analyses, confirming its reliability as a diagnostic tool for structural integrity assessment. Overall, the results demonstrate that CLSM effectively links dehydration severity with molecular and nutritional transformations, providing a robust framework for optimizing drying parameters and preserving the quality of tropical fruits.
Keywords: confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM), Tropical fruits, Dehydration, Protein fluorescence, microstructuralchanges, nutritional quality
Received: 31 Oct 2025; Accepted: 18 Nov 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Espeleta-Maya, García León, Martinez-Trinidad and Moreno-Pacheco. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: Ricardo Andres García León, ragarcial@ufpso.edu.co
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