Development of a model for quality assessment of tomatoes and apricots

The quality of tomato and apricot cultivars was assessed by sensory evaluation, consumer tests and instrumental methods. The overall sensory appreciation of tomatoes was mainly reflected by attributes such as "sweetness", "aroma", "juiciness" and "firmness". Hedonic classification of samples allowed to significantly improve the correlation between instrumental data and consumer appreciation. Instrumental measurements were focused on total sugar content (°Brix) and total amount of volatile compounds and texture (firmness). For tomatoes the CAR/PDMS fibre and for apricots the PDMS fibre were used for the analysis of total volatiles. The results obtained with tomatoes and apricots confirmed the applicability of the quality assessment model developed for evaluation of the quality of strawberries.