The a * of surface-salted cheese cr

The a * of surface-salted cheese crackers as influenced by different salt particle sizes/concentrations is shown in Table 2. There was a significant (P < 0.001) effect for treatment * time interaction, treatment and time (Table 3). At 4 months, crackers subjected to 2% and 1.5% nano-spray dried salt treatments had significantly (P < 0.05) lower a * values than crackers containing the 2% and 1.5% regular salt (Table 2). Nurul et al. [10] reported that the redness ( a * ) of fish crackers tended to decrease with an increase in the ratio of fish meat to tapioca flour. Malchev et al. [17] concluded that the red component of the pigment complex degraded faster than the yellow component. Additionally, the capsorubin, capsanthin, zeaxanthin, β lutein and β- and α-carotene were more stable in the dried red pepper than in the red pepper powder during 6 months of storage. In our study, similar changes in reddish color were found from 1 week to 4 months, which could be attributed to the pigment degradation of the cayenne pepper used in the cheese cracker formulation.