Monitoring Changes in the Volatile Profile of Ecuadorian Cocoa during Different Steps in Traditional On-Farm Processing.

The present work was conducted to evaluate the volatile profile of Ecuadorian Forastero, CCN-51, ETT103 and LR14 cocoa beans during traditional fermentation in laurel wood boxes followed by a sun-drying process. Fifty-six volatiles were identified with HS-SPME-GC-MS. Aldehydes, alcohols and ketones were the compounds that mainly characterized the fresh cocoa.

Effects of Different Heating Treatments on the Antioxidant Activity and Phenolic Compounds of Ecuadorian Red Dacca Banana.

The banana is a tropical fruit characterized by its composition of healthy and nutritional compounds. This fruit is part of traditional Ecuadorian gastronomy, being consumed in a wide variety of ways. In this context, unripe Red Dacca banana samples and those submitted to different traditional Ecuadorian heating treatments (boiling, roasting, and baking) were evaluated to profile their phenolic content by ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography coupled to high-resolution mass spectrometry (UHPLC-HRMS) and the antioxidant activity by ORAC, ABTS, and DPPH assays.