earticle

영어

Recently, packaged leafy vegetables, including perilla leaves, whose consumption has been rapidly increasing, are easily spoiled and have a short shelf life. Currently, various methods such as pre-cooling, washing, and packaging are used to maintain the quality of leafy vegetables. Among these, the pre-treatment washing method effectively reduces the spoilage rate of leafy vegetables and helps maintain freshness by removing contaminants on their surfaces. However, the research related to maintaining the quality of perilla leaves remains limited. Therefore, this study aims to establish optimal eco-friendly pre-treatment conditions that can maintain the freshness of perilla leaves and extend their shelf life. The perilla leaves were washed under various pre-treatment conditions and packaged with commercially available OPP film. Then, quality changes in the perilla leaves during storage were evaluated by analyzing factors such as microbial counts, electrolyte leakage amounts, surface color, hardness, and spoilage rate under different pre-washing conditions. As a result, it was confirmed that pre-treatment washing using medium-temperature microbubble water is effective in maintaining the freshness and extending the shelf life of perilla leaves. In addition, the effects were further enhanced when sequential combined washing methods were applied. In the future, the research will focus on developing packaging methods that enhance the washing effects of medium-temperature microbubble water and exploring combined treatments with other washing solutions to further improve the freshness preservation and shelf life extension of perilla leaves.