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     The growing global consumption of non-alcoholic drinks has brought attention to the characterization and quality control of popular beverages such as malt beverages. Organic acids remarkably impact on the microbial control, stability and organoleptic characteristics (flavor, color and aroma) of beverages. This study focuses on the determination of organic acids, including oxalic, citric, tartaric, malic, succinic, lactic, fumaric, acetic, propionic, and gallic acid, in 100 commercial malt beverages from different brands (five Iranian and five various imported brands) and flavored variants (classic, pomegranate, peach, tropical and lemon). In addition, the contents of total phenols, total flavonoids, ascorbic acid, and free amino acids were measured to assess the overall composition. Liquid chromatography (LC) was employed to develop a method for analyzing the organic acids, while spectrophotometric techniques were used for quantifying other bioactive compounds.  The results revealed significant variations in the organic acid profiles, with succinic acid being the most abundant, while tartaric acid was absent in all samples. For better data analysis, chemometrics technique (PCA method) was applied to classify achieved results. The results show that PCA can classify the malt drinks based on the additive values with a very high precision. In order to improve the quality control of malt beverages, it is recommended that some extra assessments like organic acids and free amino nitrogen determination tests would better to be considered at Iranian national standard.
 

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Pomegranate, a small tree with potential human health benefits, is grown mainly in Iran, India and USA as well as in most Near and Far East countries. It has been used extensively in folk medicine for a number of therapeutic purposes. In the present study, the ferric reducing/antioxidant power assay (FRAP) was employed and the FRAP value of the seed fraction of six different cultivars of pomegranate in Iran was determined in an attempt to compare their differing antioxidant acitivity. The antioxidant activity of seed fraction of six different cultivars of pomegranate in water extracts showed that the Sour white peel cultivar has the highest FRAP value (3.450.85 M) and the Agha Mohamad Ali cultivar has the lowest value (2.760.76 M); ethanolic extract of the seeds showed that Sour white peel and Black peel cultivars have the highest (3.881.31 M) and lowest (1.620.47 M) antioxidant activity, respectively. Results indicated that the extracts obtained from pomegranate seeds using various solvents exhibited various degrees of antioxidant activity. Further, it was cleared that Sour white peel had the highest potent antioxidant activity among different pomegranate seed cultivars and, so might be useful for its health benefits.

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 Malt beverage is one of the most popular drinks in the world. Recently, consumption of non-alcoholic beverages has expanded significantly in many countries. The permitted level of alcohol in malt beverage is less than 0.5% by Iranian National Standards. In this study, a method was developed to determine ethanol content in malt beverages by FTIR, equipped with Horizontal Attenuated Total Reflectance (H-ATR). Here, the Limit Of Detection (LOD) and Limit Of Quantification (LOQ) were 0.07% and 0.23%, respectively. The correlation coefficient of calibration curve was higher than 0.999. Fifty commercial malt beverages from six brands (five Iranian and one imported brand) and three types of flavored malt beverage (classic, equatorial, and lemon) were assessed. The average detected ethanol amount in samples was 0.19%, varying between 0.00-1.47percent. The results showed that the amount of ethanol in lemon malt drinks was more than the maximum permitted limit; that could be attributed to the usage of ethylene glycol for extraction of lemon flavor.