interaction of several descriptive and/or instrumental attributes, as in the
case of sweet note perception of tomatoes, may facilitate the develop-
ment of guidelines for production and quality control.
Summary
The overall aim of bringing together instrumental data and consumer
acceptance data is to become able to predict a consumers’ Hedonic re-
action to perceivable attributes using objective, measurable data. The
objective of this research for horticultural products is, besides the purely
scientific, to develop guidelines for production and offering criteria for
quality assurance and management.
A consumer survey showed that the important quality criteria applied
to fruits and vegetables can be grouped into four major categories. The
first category includes appearance, color and texture, which can be read-
ily determined visually or by touch. Therefore, they can be used as cri-
teria throughout the production and distribution system. The second
category includes flavor and mouthfeel. In both segments, the criteria are
closely related to physical and chemical attributes and are perceivable by
the human senses during consumption and by analytic instruments.
Experiments with different tomato varieties were conducted to in-
vestigate the relationship between measured, instrumental data (punc-
ture force, pressure firmness, reducing sugars, titratable acid) and
consumer acceptance ratings. The amount of reducing sugars was not
directly correlated with consumer ratings, as was the sweet note, deter-
mined by Quantitative Descriptive Analysis (QDA). Multiple regression
showed that reducing sugars and juiciness (again determined by quan-
titative descriptive analysis) seemed to interfere, combined explaining
most of the variation of the note “sweet” by QDA (R^2 0.93), thus hav-
ing high potential as a predictor for consumer acceptance.
Puncture force readings, associated with disturbing peel fragments,
consistently led to increased dislike ratings as shown by PCA and lin-
ear regression.
References
Adams, P. 1988. Some response of tomatoes grown in NFT to sodium chloride.
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Amerine, M. A., Pangborn, R. M. and Roessler, E. B. 1965. Physical and chemi-
cal tests related to sensory properties of foods, in Principles of Sensory Eval-
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