Abstract
Some chemical, sensorial and physical-mechanical properties of 19 apricot genotypes and Hungarian Best (control) such as moisture content, soluble solids content, titratable acidity ratio and their ratio, fruit and stone mass, flesh/stone ratio, fruit dimensions (length, width, thickness), arithmetic and geometric mean diameter, sphericity, surface area and aspect ratio were determined. Their application is also discussed. The highest moisture content and stone mass observed in X-1/1/04 and X-1/2/04, soluble solids content in ZO-1/03, titratable acidity in ZL-2/03, SS/TA ratio in ZL-1/03, and fruit mass and flesh/stone ratio in DL-1/1/04 genotype. The most number of genotypes have orange and deep orange skin and flesh colour, respectively, whereas sweet kernel taste was predominant in most genotypes. Regarding physical-mechanical properties, the superior fruit dimensions (length, width, thickness), arithmetic and geometric mean diameter and surface area observed in DL-1/1/04 genotype, whereas the highest sphericity and surface area observed in X-1/1/04 and X-1/2/04 genotypes. Also, the series of genotypes evaluated have better chemical, sensorial and physical-mechanical properties than Hungarian Best (control). Finally, information about these properties is very important for understanding the behaviour of the product during the postharvest operations.
Highlights
Apricots are cultivated worldwide mainly for their high-quality fruit, which is consumed fresh, processed by the food industry, or preserved by drying (Ghita, 2008; Haciseferogullari et al, 2007)
Evaluation of chemical and sensorial properties The chemical and sensorial properties of apricot fruits are given in Tab. 1
The present range values are in a good accordance with previous works carried out in apricot (Akin et al, 2008; Wills et al, 1983), whereas higher than those obtained by Haciseferogullari et al (2007) who reported that in some group of Turkish apricot cultivars moisture content varied from 76.37 to 82.27%
Summary
Apricots are cultivated worldwide mainly for their high-quality fruit, which is consumed fresh, processed by the food industry, or preserved by drying (Ghita, 2008; Haciseferogullari et al, 2007). Fruit shape is very important in sorting, sizing and determination of how many fruits can be placed in shipping containers or plastic bags of a given size (Keramat Jahromi et al, 2008) Other physical properties such as fruit mass and flesh/stone ratio, as one of the most important external quality parameters for consumer acceptability (Milošević et al, 2010; Ruiz and Egea, 2008) are important to design fluid velocities for transportation (Mohsenin, 1986). For these reasons, the physical properties of apricot can be important for design of equipments for processing, transportation, sorting, separating and packing. The second is to produce a convenient reference table with chemical, sensorial and physical-mechanical information suitable for the evaluation of nutritional information, design of equipments for harvesting, transportation, sorting, separation and packing
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