Criteria for keeping quality in Golden Delicious apples.
Apples harvested in October 1975, from several regions of the Netherlands, were stored in air or under a controlled atmosphere (CA), at 3--4 degrees C in 11 batches. They were analysed for L-malate and sucrose, and their acceptability was assessed by pilot test. The decrease of L-malate during storage (0.1 g in 37.5 days in air and in 75 days under CA) was confirmed. Thus one can predict (at the start of the trial) the L-malate content at a later stage of the storage. It had been proposed previously that 0.39--0.45% of L-malate corresponds to similar proportions of acceptable and unacceptable fruits, as determined by a laboratory panel. This hypothesis was not corroborated by the pilot test. Based on the data of this test, the original criteria were adapted as follows. In most batches, the percentage of unacceptable apples is low (0--15%) as long as the content of L-malate is greater than or equal to 0.55%. If L-malate has already decreased to 0.54--0.50%, then sucrose should be greater than or equal to 2%.
D005519:Food Preservation / Q000592:standards; D005638:Fruit / Q000592:standards*; D009426:Netherlands; D013696:Temperature