Integration of sensory and objective measurements of tomato quality: quantitative assessment of the effect of harvest date as compared with growth medium (soil versus rockwool), electrical conductivity, variety and maturity
2005
Thybo, A.K. | Bechmann, I.E. | Brandt, K.
Sensory characteristics as well as objective measures of texture, refractory index, colour and total acid content were measured in tomatoes (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) from two experiments comprising variation in harvest time, electrical conductivity (EC), growth medium (soil versus rockwool), variety and maturity. For most characteristics, simultaneous sensory evaluations were more sensitive for detection of small differences than corresponding objective measurements, while the objective measurements obtained better significances in comparisons of different harvest times. Using the correlations between parallel sensory and objective analyses of firmness, a procedure to combine objective and sensory measurements of texture was defined and used to compensate for the drift of sensory data at different evaluation times, and the calibrated measure of firmness used in a principal components analysis. For most sensory characteristics assessed, the greatest variation was due to differences in variety, followed by maturity, harvest time and EC, while the type of growth medium (soil or rockwool) had no or little effect. However, for the characteristics related to texture (crispness and firmness), the ranking was harvest time, EC, growth medium, maturity and variety, with soil-grown tomatoes being slightly but significantly softer than the rockwool-grown ones.
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