Vol. 80 No: 6

Title:
Quality of apples grown in a Scandinavian high-density orchard and chemical composition in relation to sensory quality

Authors:
A.K. THYBO, L. SØRENSEN, L.P. CHRISTENSEN and B.F. KÜHN

pp: 727-735

Abstract:
The effect of plant density (11,110; 5,550 or 3,700 trees ha^-1) and two colour gradings on yield, fruit weight, appearance, texture, sugar, acid, volatile compounds and 12 sensory attributes were determined for the apple cultivars ´Elshof`, ´King Jonagold` and ´Topaz` harvested in 2002. For all three apple cultivars, yield increased and surface redness and soluble solids content (SSC) decreased with an increase in plant density.The compositions of volatile compounds were not affected by planting density. No effect of plant density was observed on sensory quality attributes, which may be due to the very small differences recorded in chemical composition of non-volatile and volatile components. Fruit weight and SSC were significantly affected by colour grading for all three cultivars, whereas colour grading only affected the sensory quality of ´King Jonagold`. Higher red colour gradings of ´King Jonagold` had higher concentrations of hexyl butanoate, butyl butanoate and 1-octanol than the lower red colour grading. The study also showed that the variation in some sensory flavour attributes between cultivars was correlated with the concentrations of volatile compounds, of which the majority where straight-chain and branched-chain esters of fatty acids with characteristic fruity and/or sweet notes. The highest correlation between aroma compounds and sensory flavour attributes was found for apple flavour (r = 0.89) and perfumed flavour (r = 0.84).

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