Abstract
Sweetness is one of the main drivers of consumer preference, and thus is given high priority in apple breeding programmes. Due to the complexity of sweetness evaluation, soluble solid content (SSC) is commonly used as an estimation of this trait. Nevertheless, it has been demonstrated that SSC and sweet taste are poorly correlated. Though individual sugar content may vary greatly between and within apple cultivars, no previous study has tried to investigate the relationship between the amount of individual sugars, or ratios of these, and apple sweetness. In this work, we quantified the major sugars (sucrose, glucose, fructose, xylose) and sorbitol and explored their influence on perceived sweetness in apple; we also related this to malic acid content, SSC and volatile compounds. Our data confirmed that the correlation between sweetness and SSC is weak. We found that sorbitol content correlates (similarly to SSC) with perceived sweetness better than any other single sugar or total sugar content. The single sugars show no differentiable importance in determining apple sweetness. Our predictive model based on partial least squares regression shows that after sorbitol and SSC, the most important contribution to apple sweetness is provided by several volatile compounds, mainly esters and farnesene.
Highlights
Sweetness is one of the main drivers of consumer preference, and is given high priority in apple breeding programmes
Sweetness is one of the most important fruit sensory quality traits taken into account in breeding programmes[11]
Corollaro et al, reported a detailed and comprehensive methodology for sensory profiling of apples based on a consensus vocabulary[13] and studied the link between sensory attributes and instrumental data[14]
Summary
Sweetness is one of the main drivers of consumer preference, and is given high priority in apple breeding programmes. Sweetness and sourness have been recognized as important drivers of apple consumer preference[8]; recent studies have confirmed this[9,10] For this reason, sweetness is one of the most important fruit sensory quality traits taken into account in breeding programmes[11]. The relationship between the colour of the apple flesh and sweetness or sourness was reported as well This relationship is likely due to an indirect correlation between changes in chemical composition during apple ripening and the consumer’s expectation of a sourer taste from a green-fleshed apple and vice versa[14]. This influence of colour on sweetness is a known phenomenon[19]. This phenomenon is known as odour-induced enhancement of taste perception[20]
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