New Ultralow-Cost Telemetric System for a Rapid Electrochemical Detection of Vitamin C in Fresh Orange Juice

Ascorbic acid (AA), one of the principal micronutrients in horticultural crops, plays a key role in the human metabolism, and its determination in food products has a great significance. Citrus fruits are rich in AA, but its content is highly susceptible to change during postharvest processing and storage. We present a new ultralow-cost system, constituted of an amperometric microsensor composed of three rod carbon electrodes connected to a telemetric device, for online detection of AA in orange juice, as an alternative to conventional analytical methods. The in vitro calibration, ranged from 0 to 5 mM, and AA juice content was calculated by adding low volumes of sample into an acetate buffer solution at a constant potential of +120 mV vs carbon pseudoreference. This new approach, which is simple, expandable, and inexpensive, seems appropriate for large scale commercial use.