Mango dry matter content at harvest to achieve high consumer quality of different cultivars in different growing seasons

Abstract

Dry matter content (DMC) at harvest has been shown to be highly correlated with soluble solids content (SSC), which determines consumer acceptance of ripe mango. However, studies are required to evaluate the stability of the relationship among DMC x SSC x consumer acceptance for different mango cultivars under different climatic/seasonal growing conditions. The hypothesis of our study was that the minimum mango DMC required to achieve high consumer quality and acceptance is highly affected by the cultivar and climatic/seasonal growing conditions. The objective of this study was to determine the fruit DMC at harvest required to achieve high consumer quality and acceptance for ‘Palmer’ and ‘Tommy Atkins’ mangoes produced during the summer and winter growing seasons in the São Francisco Valley, Brazil. The DMC of 'Palmer' and 'Tommy Atkins' mangoes linearly increased during the last month before harvest in fruit produced in both growing seasons. During the last month before harvest, the DMC accumulation rates were 4.4 and 5.7 g kg−1 per week in ‘Palmer’ and 8.1 and 8.5 g kg−1 per week in ‘Tommy Atkins’ mangoes produced in the summer and winter, respectively. At harvest, a portable Vis-NIR spectrometer was used to non-destructively determine the DMC of 'Palmer' and 'Tommy Atkins' mangoes that were then grouped into three different DMC categories for each cultivar and season, with ranges from 50 to 80 g kg−1. The fruit were then kept at 12 °C with relative humidity of 90–95% to simulate the shipping conditions, until they reached the ready-to-eat ripeness stage, with flesh firmness ≤ 15 N. The fruit were then subjected to physicochemical and sensory analyses. Higher DMC at harvest results in higher soluble solids content in ripe mangoes. Minimum DMC values at harvest to guarantee that consumers will respond with at least “like moderately” (score of 7 out of 9) in sensory testing of mango fruit were found to be 137 g kg−1 and 145 g kg−1 for ‘Palmer’ and 144 g kg−1 and 153 g kg−1 for ‘Tommy Atkins’ for summer and winter harvests, respectively. The minimum mango DMC required to achieve high consumer quality and acceptance was weakly related to cultivar and climatic/seasonal growing conditions.