Articles
Improving consumer experiences through orchard and postharvest management of apricots
Article number
1450_17
Pages
123 – 132
Language
English
Abstract
Consumer dissatisfaction with poor apricot fruit quality poses a significant risk to repeat purchases, highlighting the need for strategic interventions to enhance consumer experience.
Understanding consumer preferences for attributes like fruit sweetness and firmness is crucial for aligning production with market demands.
To reduce the risk of poor consumer experiences, options include changing cultivars, orchard management, harvest decisions, and postharvest handling and management.
Cultivar choice plays a pivotal role in determining fruit quality attributes and storage potential.
Some recently released cultivars produce fruit that exhibit minimal ethylene production, thereby slowing the softening process and prolonging shelf-life.
Orchard management affects fruit quality.
For example, fruit have poorer quality in shaded canopy positions, so reflective mulch or orchard systems that ensure good light penetration can improve quality uniformity.
Harvesting at the correct maturity is vital for a good eating experience as premature harvesting can lead to underdeveloped flavours and insufficient sweetness, while delayed harvesting leads to an increased proportion of over-soft fruit.
Non-destructive fruit quality measurements enable precise differentiation of fruit maturity and quality attributes.
Apricots can lose quality and develop chilling injury if stored too cold, too warm, too long or in modified atmospheres.
Chilling injury symptoms include mealiness, rubberiness, gel formation and loss of juiciness.
Normal ripening of apricots allows the cell walls to degrade and cells break open to release juice when chewed.
This normal process is not resumed after cool storage in chilling-injured fruit.
Understanding the causes and progression of chilling can help to reduce the risks of it occurring.
Treatments that could enable the resumption of cell wall degradation, such as intermittent warming or different storage temperatures, may reduce chilling injury.
We conclude that cultivar selection, harvest maturity, and storage temperature and duration contribute the most to reducing the risk of poor consumer experience.
Understanding consumer preferences for attributes like fruit sweetness and firmness is crucial for aligning production with market demands.
To reduce the risk of poor consumer experiences, options include changing cultivars, orchard management, harvest decisions, and postharvest handling and management.
Cultivar choice plays a pivotal role in determining fruit quality attributes and storage potential.
Some recently released cultivars produce fruit that exhibit minimal ethylene production, thereby slowing the softening process and prolonging shelf-life.
Orchard management affects fruit quality.
For example, fruit have poorer quality in shaded canopy positions, so reflective mulch or orchard systems that ensure good light penetration can improve quality uniformity.
Harvesting at the correct maturity is vital for a good eating experience as premature harvesting can lead to underdeveloped flavours and insufficient sweetness, while delayed harvesting leads to an increased proportion of over-soft fruit.
Non-destructive fruit quality measurements enable precise differentiation of fruit maturity and quality attributes.
Apricots can lose quality and develop chilling injury if stored too cold, too warm, too long or in modified atmospheres.
Chilling injury symptoms include mealiness, rubberiness, gel formation and loss of juiciness.
Normal ripening of apricots allows the cell walls to degrade and cells break open to release juice when chewed.
This normal process is not resumed after cool storage in chilling-injured fruit.
Understanding the causes and progression of chilling can help to reduce the risks of it occurring.
Treatments that could enable the resumption of cell wall degradation, such as intermittent warming or different storage temperatures, may reduce chilling injury.
We conclude that cultivar selection, harvest maturity, and storage temperature and duration contribute the most to reducing the risk of poor consumer experience.
Publication
Authors
J. Stanley, C. Scofield, M. Schurmann, J. Feng, R. Harker, R. Schröder
Keywords
Prunus armeniaca L., fruit quality, chilling injury, harvest maturity, cultivar selection, low ethylene, storage temperatures
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