Resumo

MELENDEZ PASTRANA, Inocente Yuliana; RODRIGUEZ MORACHIS, Manuel Alonso; RODRIGUEZ MEDINA, Manuel Arnoldo  e  ZORRILLA BRIONES, Francisco. Determination of Useful Life on Corn Tortilla Added with Thyme Essential Oil Through Accelerated Life Test. RIDE. Rev. Iberoam. Investig. Desarro. Educ [online]. 2021, vol.12, n.23, e019.  Epub 14-Fev-2022. ISSN 2007-7467.  https://doi.org/10.23913/ride.v12i23.1017.

The corn tortilla is one of the main components in the Mexican diet. In the manufacturing process, different chemical preservatives are used, such as sodium propionate and some acidifiers to increase the shelf life of the corn tortilla. In Mexico, as there is no well-defined regulation on the addition of chemical preservatives, there is no consumer protection. Hence, this research proposes the addition of thyme essential oil as a bioconservative. The methodology used consisted of two separate experiments: one using a concentration of 0.09 % of thyme essential oil and the other using 0.2 % sodium propionate. Thus, using the Arrhenius model, the useful life of the corn tortilla added with thyme essential oil at 21 ° C was calculated and it was found to be 104.3356 hours, while for the tortilla added with sodium propionate, under the Same conditions, a life of 75.3300 hours was obtained. Likewise, through the acceleration factor, a better performance of thyme essential oil was obtained as an organic preservative, in contrast to sodium propionate. In sum, not only does it improve the food safety of the product in terms of its shelf life, but thyme essential oil can replace a carcinogenic preservative in the preparation of corn tortillas.

Palavras-chave : thyme essential oil; reliability; Arrhenius-Weibull model; Arrhenius ratio; corn tortilla; shelf life.