Sensory typology of apples used to evaluate scab-resistant cultivars as compared to known commercial apples

Abstract

In order to have recognizable presence and potential success in the marketplace, any new apple cultivar must have similar or superior quality when compared with well-known cultivars. Different apple cultivars are produced to match preferences of different segments of consumers, characterized with specific sensory preferences. Consumer segments vary in different countries (Harker et al. 2003;Sansavini et al. 2004;Bonany et al. 2013), thus, it may not be possible to assess consumer ac- The aim of this work was to verify a comparative procedure for evaluating apple cultivars based on typology and comparing the sensory features of the examined cultivars during cold storage and simulated shelf-life. The procedure was applied experimentally to compare scab-resistant apples to known commercial cultivars. The procedure consisted of four sensory profiling analyses of internal apple characteristics: after two and four months of cold storage and after an additional ten days of shelf-life following each cold storage period. Eleven sensory attributes were evaluated at each timing, resulting in four general types of apple cultivars indicated and the cultivar storability over long cold storage time and shelf-life rated. The study was performed on 8 scab-resistant and 14 commercial apple cultivars evaluated over two consecutive years. The examined cultivars were then segmented into six groups of different sensory characteristics, which allowed for indicating those scab-resistant cultivars which might replace the conventional ones of equivalent sensory features.