ARE ORGANIC APPLES REALLY HEALTHIER?

Abstract

As consumers’ demand for organic fruits continues to increase, organic horticulture has increased worldwide. Proper nutrition management is a key factor in organic farms to produce healthy, well-developed and attractive fruits which meet consumers’ demands. To achieve this goal organic farmers need to develop and improve their nutrition management. In this paper an organic and integrated apple plantation were compared to study their fruit quality parameters and to establish the similarities and differences between production systems. Sugars, organic acids, vitamin C and number of healthy fruit were studied in the same apple cultivars from an organic and an integrated orchard. Besides chemical analysis, an organoleptic survey was conducted to estimate consumer response. The results showed that fructose and sucrose were the major sugars and malic acid the predominant acid. From our data it was clear that fruit components such as acids and sugars were affected by cultivars more than production system. In addition, the organoleptic survey did not identify any differences between organic and integrated products. The majority of tasters preferred integrated fruit over organic fruit. In summary, organic farmers make more efforts to increase fruit productivity, quality and design but such increased efforts may not ensure consistent profit for Hungarian fruit growers due to market conditions.