ISHS Acta Horticulturae 464: International Postharvest Science Conference Postharvest 96
A COMPARISON OF FRUIT MATURITY AND QUALITY OF FOUR STRAINS OF ‘FUJI’ APPLES |
| Authors: | G.S. Brown, J. O'Loughlin, P. Jotic |
| Abstract:
For the successful introduction of a new cultivar or strain of apple it is imperative that the correct genetic material for the growing location is selected and released to industry. To this end the Tasmanian Department of Primary Industry conducts a variety improvement programme which introduces and evaluates new apple selections in Tasmania. The Tasmanian ‘Fuji’ crop is predominantly based on the ‘Naga Fu 2’ selection, however, three other selections are available. This paper reports on studies of the rate of fruit maturity and quality of ‘Naga Fu 2’, ‘Naga Fu 1’, ‘Aki Fu 1’ (a striped red selection) and ‘Aki Fu 7’ grown in Tasmania. Thirty randomly selected apples were harvested from a quarter of each of 6 test trees per selection. Tree quarters were randomly allocated to each of the 4 harvests which occurred at weekly intervals from 160 days after full bloom. Fruit were analysed within 10 h of harvest for average weight, area of coloration (visually), flesh firmness (11 mm penetrometer), incidence of watercore (visually) and total soluble solids (digital refractometer). Analysis was by split plot analysis of variance. It was found that ‘Naga Fu 2’, the most common commercial strain in Tasmania, produced the largest fruit which also had a large area of coloured skin. This strain did, however produce the softest fruit. Fruit firmness of the two ‘Naga Fu’ strains was also observed to decrease more rapidly across the harvest period than the ‘Aki Fu’ strains. Very little fruit softening occurred over the 4-week harvest period for the ‘Aki Fu’ fruit. For all strains the incidence of water core increased geometrically with time from near zero at the second harvest to close to 35 percent of fruit at the final harvest. It appeared as though this increase in watercore was delayed for the ‘Naga Fu 1’ strain where very little water core was observed at the third harvest although it was prevalent at the final harvest. Fruit weight, sugars and area of coloured skin were observed to increase in a linear fashion over the harvest period. It was observed that ‘Naga Fu 1’ had reduced fruit sugar content when compared with the other strains while the ‘Aki Fu 1’ fruit had a lower area of red skin, although this may have been related to its striped characteristic. | |
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