Ultrasonication is a nonthermal method of food processing that has the advantage of preserving fruit juices.

There are scientific

papers that deal about degradative effect of the ultrasound that causes the common side-effects associated with conventional heat
treatment [1,2]. Applications of ultrasound in the processing of fruit juices and the effects of sonication on fruit juices have been
studied [3–5]. Sonication is considered as one of the potential nonthermal techniques for the processing of fruit juices that can improve the
process through reduced processing time, higher throughput and lower energy consumption [6–8]. The main combination of ultrasound used
in any practical application, is in conjunction with pressure treatment (manosonication), heat
treatment (thermosonication) or both (manothermosonication). The effect of ultrasound has been mainly attributed to physical
phenomena (acoustic cavitation and the resulting high-speed microjets and shockwaves) and/or chemical phenomena occurred
due to formation of free radicals (e.g. H and OH) from the sonolysis of water vapour inside collapsing bubbles. The primary effect of
usage of non-thermal food processing techniques is inactivation of microorganisms [9,10].

Many researchers have demonstrated reduced effects on quality or nutritional parameters including grapefruit juice [11], melon
juice [12], apple juice [13,14], strawberry juice [15] and cranberry juice [16–18]. In order to observe changes of thermosonicated fruit juices
and achieve inactivation of microorganisms, it is necessary to understand the mechanical, chemical, physical and sensorial changes in
treated media. Thermosonication can be used to inactivate microorganism and specific attention is needed to avoid aromatic, sensorial and
organoleptic changes in food. Today, consumers make demands on the quality, flavour and taste of different kinds of fruit juices [1,22,23].
It is important to keep very high quality standards of products including the taste and to make sure that juices and nectars meet predefined
chemical and physical parameters. For this purpose, it is important to use sophisticated equipment and technical expertise in sample
preparation and analysis and one of it are electronic nose and tongue [24–26]. In the study by Dias et al. [25] the electronic tongue was
successfully applied for semi-quantitative discrimination of real juice soft drinks, based on the added fruit level. Non-specific lipo/polymeric
membranes were used for the first time, to perform quantitative determination of two major compounds present in those beverages, fructose
and glucose. For sensory analysis, industry needs trained panellists, including a substantial amount of resources, time and cost [26–29]. It is
important to quickly develop and test new methodologies that will ensure low-cost and reliable alternative to these costly and lengthy
procedures. Electronic tongues of several types (potentiometric, voltammetric and impedance) may represent such alternatives. They have
many applications and have been used to test several juices with a combination of a gas sensor array and voltammetric electronic tongue
[13,25,27]. An electronic tongue functions by combining signals from non-specific and overlapping sensors with pattern recognition
methods [25,26,30]. For an electronic tongue, the sample handling and delivery system is a trivial issue, and interfacing and conditioning
circuits are handled by computer software. Our previous work was done on aromatic profiling of sonicated apple juice and usage of
sonication in inactivation of microorganism [13,31].

The cranberry belongs to the same genus as the blueberry, Vaccinium. Cranberry has special combination of phenolic, proanthocyanidin,
anthocyanin, flavonoid, and triterpenoid antioxidants [19–21]. There is special combination of three antioxidant nutrients in cranberry:
resveratrol, piceatannol, and pterostilbene. The phytonutrients in cranberry provide maximal antioxidant benefits only when consumed in
combination with each other, and also only when consumed alongside of conventional antioxidant nutrients present in cranberry like
manganese and vitamin C.

The purpose of this investigation was to examine the influence of high power ultrasound and pasteurisation on the changes in the
aroma profile and sensory attributes of cranberry juice and nectar. The novelty of this work is the application of electronic tongue in
analysis of sonicated fruit juice and correlation between trained sensorial panellists. The aim was to observe optimal ultrasound
treatment regarding changes in aroma profile of fruit juices.

2. Materials and methods

2.1. Cranberry juice and nectar preparation
Based on the national regulation [32] for production of fruit juices and complementary products, two different cranberry juices
were made. Pure (100%) cranberry juice and 30% cranberry nectar were made with minimum of 7.5 Bx.

Composition of pure (100%) cranberry juice (g) was: concentrated fruit juice 167, sugar 0, citric acid 0, water 833; and for 30% cranberry
nectar is: concentrated fruit juice 52, sugar 54, citric acid 3, and water 960. Untreated juice and nectar samples were denoted B1.0 and B2.0,
respectively, pasteurised B1.P and B2.P, respectively, the ultrasound treated ones as B1.1-B1.16 and B2.1-B2.16, respectively (Table 1).
The repetitions of untreated and pasteurised samples analysis have been done in triplicate.

2.2. Experimental methodology

In this study, the experiment was designed in STATGRAPHICS Centurion (StatPoint Technologies, Inc, Warrenton, VA, USA) software.
The experiment consisted of 16 experimental trials (Table 1). The independent variables were amplitude: X1 (lm), temperature: X2 (C) and
treatment time: X3 (min). The operating variables were considered at three levels, namely low (1), central (0) and high (1). Experiments
were organized in a factorial design (including factorial points, axial points and centre point) and the remaining part involving the
replication of the central point to get good estimate of the experimental error. Repetition experiments were carried out after the other
experiments followed by order of runs designed by programme. The designs were based on the central composite design (CCD), face
cantered design characteristic with two centre points [33–35]. The total number of experiments of the designs (N) can be calculated as
follows:

where Ni = 2n is the number of experiments (23 = 8), No is the number of centre points and Nj = 2 n (2 3 = 6), is the number of star points
(2).
Design matrix for the experiment and the regression model proposed for the response is given below [5,36]: