For Abstracts

Anne Plotto (USDA, ARS) Jinhe Bai (USDA, ARS) Jan Narciso (USDA, ARS - retired) Liz Baldwin (USDA, ARS)

Sensory evaluation is primarily used by food companies in product development and prior to marketing. It has been adopted by the horticultural research community as an additional measure of produce quality upon pre- and postharvest treatments. With fresh-cut fruits, maturity of the product at processing time, sanitation, packaging and storage can all affect appearance and flavor. Sensory tests are designed to evaluate processing and fruit variables. Example of recent research at the USDA-ARS will be given: edible coatings on fresh-cut zucchinis, active packaging, effect of chilling injury on sensitive commodities, maturity and storage studies, etc. In some cases, when an unexpected sensory quality was observed due to a specific treatment, additional analytical measurements were warranted to understand the underlying effect of such treatment.

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