Unexplained bloating during storage has forced concentrated Rosa roxburghii Tratt juice (CRRTJ) to adopt pressure-resistant packaging and high-standard cold-chain storage, which has substantially increased production costs. Meanwhile, pouch rupture poses safety risks throughout the production, transportation, and warehousing processes. This bloating phenomenon has been a major bottleneck restricting the development of the CRRT processing industry for years.

Researchers from the Institute of Biophysics and the Institute of Geochemistry of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, in collaboration with enterprises in Guizhou Province, have introduced widely targeted metabolomics to investigate CRRTJ bloating.

Using a "panoramic chemical CT scan" on the juice system, the researchers solved this long-standing industrial problem. Their findings were published in Food Chemistry on January 9.

To simulate the bloating process, the researchers incubated the juice at 50 °C and analyzed samples taken at multiple time points using UPLC-QTRAP-MS/MS. They identified a total of 2,242 metabolites spanning twelve chemical classes, including alkaloids, flavonoids, and amino acids and their derivatives.

Multivariate statistical analyses revealed that during the CRRTJ bloating process, the levels of vitamin C (Vc) and its chiral isomer dehydro-D-ascorbic acid (D-Vc) steadily declined until complete depletion. Meanwhile, CO₂ concentrations in the headspace gas increased stepwise in parallel. This strong correlation indicated that the massive degradation of Vc and its chiral isomers is likely the main driver of bloating.

Mechanistic investigations showed that, in the uniquely acidic microenvironment of CRRTJ, Vc molecules transform through three parallel pathways: a classical oxidative pathway, a lactone-rearrangement pathway, and an oxalate-hydrolysis pathway. All three routes release CO₂, and their cumulative effects are sufficient to cause significant expansion of CRRTJ packaging.

This study provides valuable insights for managing furanone-rich beverage systems within global supply chains and has the potential to influence policy, quality frameworks, and food science research worldwide.