Apricots have a short storage life principally caused by a rapid softening, which increases the sensitivity of the fruit to mechanical damage, and to the development of fungal diseases.
The current methods to assess fruit firmness give limited information on the evolution and the mechanisms of softening.
Scientists from the Agroscope Research Centre have been researching a multi-parameter approach for apricot texture analysis. With the aim of developing novel strategies to better monitor fruit softening, a multi-parameter approach measuring textural properties was evaluated and compared to a reference method whose results are obtained from a unique parameter.
Quantitative measurement of texture is essential to ensure an optimal commercial quality of apricots on the market and to characterise the mechanisms involved in the evolution of this parameter before and after harvest. Thanks to a better understanding of the textural properties of apricots and their changes as the fruit ripens, quality for the consumers could be improved and losses reduced along the entire supply chain.
They used their TA.XTplus Texture Analyser to determine whole fruit firmness using a compression test. Measurements performed with the TA.XTplus Texture Analyser allowed a multi-tests approach that described more precisely the influence of cultivar and storage conditions on different textural properties of the fruit. This instrument gives whole curves from which parameters can be computed. This has the advantage that the evaluation of the influence of the different factors can be done based on the whole curves or only on the extracted parameters. Unlike measurements performed on an AGROSTA®100 device on a small surface of each fruit, compression tests are done on the whole fruit. This test gives information on the viscoelastic properties of the apricot, which is particularly useful for predicting its ability to resist to pressure forces occurring during the post-harvest handling of the fruit (during transport for example). Also, the results obtained by puncture tests allowed more precise evaluation of the influence of the storage conditions on the textural properties of the skin and the flesh. Moreover, texturometry allowed more detailed analysis of the properties of the skin which were not correlated with the firmness obtained with the manual device.
The results showed that this multi-parametric approach allows detailed evaluation of the apricots’ textural properties – after all why settle for an instrument that measures one parameters when you can benefit from a single universal instrument that has a multitude of texture measurement solutions?
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Our article ‘A world of food development possibilities with fruit’ presents a wide range of different texture measurements using the Texture Analyser on fruit ranging from dried, pureed, whole or processed.
