Rheological and Physical Properties Affected by the Thermal Processing of Fruit: A Bibliometric Analysis

Abstract

This work describes a bibliometric analysis of recent articles addressing the applications of thermal processing in foods, as well as its effect on their physicochemical and rheological properties. The analysis involved utilizing the software tools VOSviewer and RStudio to map the knowledge domain. Initially, 665 articles from peer-reviewed journals were retrieved, but only 92 (13.8%) of them discussed thermal processing related to fruit applications and were published in indexed journals. However, this number was further narrowed down to 35 (5.3%) articles specifically focused on the target subject. A rigorous appraisal of these 35 articles allowed it to be classified according to its aim, kind of fruit used, thermal processing treatment, and its rheological, physicochemical, and other properties. The leading countries in the general area of food thermal processing research according to documents and citations were China, USA, Brazil, India and Spain. It is important to highlight that conventional thermal processing continues to be investigated for applications in fruits; on the other hand, it is expected that the use of unconventional or emerging technologies will bring significant advances to the food industry in the future.