Fruit and Vegetable Quality

CHAPTER 3

Consumer Preferences and Breeding Goals

SUSANNE PECHER

MATTHAIS VON OPPEN

INTRODUCTION

THIS chapter is about how to fulfill the requirements of consumers for
quality of food products if they don’t know precisely and can’t express
what they prefer. Consumers’ preferences are crucial for the acceptance
of improved varieties selected by breeders. This is especially true in low-
income countries where people often depend solely on one staple food
to cover their dietary needs, but holds as well for high-income countries.
However, in high-income countries it is probably even more difficult for
breeders to gain insight into consumers’ requirements as with growing
income consumer demands for food become increasingly complex.
Hence consumers’ preferences often remain mysterious. While breeders
have skills and knowledge in the technical aspects of crop improvement,
economists contribute the tools for assessing demand. It is the role of
the economist to first understand and then to design ways of eliciting
information on consumer preferences for quality characteristics. If this
information can be translated into objectively measurable criteria, breed-
ers can use it to select not only yield but also quality. In this interaction
between plant breeders and economists it is important that both agree
on certain principles that hold in the respective fields of economics and
plant breeding, so that interdisciplinary exchange will be fruitful.
It is the objective of this chapter to contribute to such interdiscipli-
nary exchange. After explaining a few basic principles of consumer de-

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