New Zealand Journal of Crop and Horticultural Science

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Quality of processing tomato (Lycoperscion

esculentum) fruit from four bloom dates in relation
to optimal harvest timing

A. R. Renquist & J. B. Reid

To cite this article: A. R. Renquist & J. B. Reid (1998) Quality of processing tomato (Lycoperscion
esculentum) fruit from four bloom dates in relation to optimal harvest timing, New Zealand Journal
of Crop and Horticultural Science, 26:2, 161-168, DOI: 10.1080/01140671.1998.9514052

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/01140671.1998.9514052

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New Zealand Journal of Crop and Horticultural Science, 1998, Vol. 26: 161-168
0014-0671/98/2602-0161 $7.00 © The Royal Society of New Zealand 1998
Quality of processing tomato (Lycoperscion esculentum) fruit
from four bloom dates in relation to optimal harvest timing
A. R. RENQUIST
J. B. REID
New Zealand Institute for Crop & Food
Research Limited
Hawke's Bay Research Centre
Box 85, Hastings
New Zealand
Abstract Two related processing tomato
(Lycoperscion esculentum (L.)) fruit quality issues
were investigated: (1) the difficulty of representative
sampling to test quality, given the wide range of fruit
age at harvest time; and (2) identifying the best time
to harvest for maximum quality. In a Hastings, New
Zealand, trial we tagged large samples of opening
flowers on each of four dates about a week apart, and
at harvest we compared quality of fruit homogenate
(puree). There was a distinct pattern of higher qual-
ity in the latest-set (youngest) fruit in terms of total
solids, °Brix (soluble solids), titratable acidity, and
Bostwick flow (gross viscosity). These data are in-
direct evidence that fruit would have higher quality
if harvested at an earlier stage of maturity than cur-
rently practised. Average skin and puree colour were
both slightly less red in the fruit from the last bloom
date. However, these fruit were much more variable
in colour than the earliest-set (oldest) fruit, raising
the concern that fruit maturity and/or quality may not
be a consistent function of fruit age.
H97-34
Received 17 August 1997; accepted 6 April 1998
161
Keywords flower demography; cohorts; soluble
solids; °Brix; titratable acidity; pH; viscosity;
Bostwick; tristimulus; colour; lycopene
INTRODUCTION
There is an extensive 60-year literature on the qual-
ity of processed tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum
(L.)) products and on breeding cultivars to suit
processing needs. There has also been considerable
research on tomato agronomy, yet there are clearly
large gaps in the understanding of how the field
environment and crop management (e.g., irrigation)
influence each of the fruit properties measured at
harvest to estimate the quality of processed products.
Tomato paste is the product of most interest since
it is reformulated into many other products. Its prin-
cipal quality parameters and their measures are dry
matter (% total solids), soluble solids (°Brix),
titratable acidity (% citric acid equivalent), pH, gross
viscosity (Bostwick flow), and colour (tristimulus a
or a/b). Since the paste values for most of these can
be predicted from the same measurements on fresh
fruit homogenate, also called pulp or puree, analy-
ses are made on fruit at harvest. This requires heat-
ing the fruit before pulping to improve the accuracy
of predicting viscosity (Wolcott et al. 1987). After
years of cultivar testing, typical ranges of each fac-
tor are known (Dadomo et al. 1994) and target val-
ues are similar among processors. However, target
values may vary for different end products and there
is some specialisation of cultivars with high scores
for specific quality indices, such as viscosity. The
test methods for most of these indices have gained
acceptance for comparing cultivars, but are less
proven for changes in a particular cultivar in re-
sponse to field environment or crop management.
A current practical objective with processing to-
matoes is to optimise the time of harvest in terms of
resulting product quality. This would be helped by
a model of field influences on fruit quality which
included the inter-relationships among quality pa-
rameters during fruit maturation. Skin or fruit
162 New Zealand Journal of Crop and Horticultural Science, 1998, Vol. 26
homogenate colour is usually considered to be
closely associated with ripening processes during
much of fruit development and, at present, colour is
a key guide to choice of harvest date. However, pH
and sometimes titratable acidity are known to be less
favourable in fully ripe fruit (Davies & Hobson
1981). It was recently found that even in less ma-
ture fruit colour does not correlate positively with
other fruit quality parameters (Young et al. 1993).
It has usually been reported that total solids and
°Brix increase with colour and maturity (Salunkhe
et al. 1974). This trend is usually assumed in prac-
tice by the process tomato industry. However, sev-
eral contrary findings exist. In a trial from before the
era of single mechanical harvest, when plots were
each harvested three times, °Brix decreased with
each harvest (Wight et al. 1962). A more recent trial
(Alvino et al. 1988) compared subplots in which all
fruit was harvested on three dates; °Brix values were
similar, but most of the other quality factors scored
best on the earliest harvest date. Young et al. (1993)
found that both total solids and °Brix decreased as
colour increased in a typical cultivar.
Such indications that product quality could be
improved by earlier harvesting do not appear to have
been put into commercial practice. The most com-
mon definition of "harvest maturity" for processing
tomatoes around the world is the time of minimum
discard of green, overripe, and diseased fruits
(Alvino et al. 1988). Further research should clarify
this issue and increase the precision in choosing the
best harvest date for a particular objective.
An additional obstacle to quantifying relation-
ships among quality parameters is the high variabil-
ity between fruit at the time of harvest. A typical
plant has 15^45 flower clusters (trasses) with 2-7
fruit on each trass, all developing during the 8-9
weeks when the bulk of structural vegetative growth
occurs. Although fruit size and colour can be sam-
pled uniformly, differences in maturity would still
seem likely and pose difficulties in selecting sam-
ples from which to represent the processing quality
of the whole fruit population.
Our objective was to compare homogenate qual-
ity indices in fruit which developed from flowers
with four bloom dates, each about a week apart. We
attempted to ascertain whether quality differences
are inherent effects of the plant developmental stage
or primarily reflect differences in the length of rip-
ening time. This also required testing the assump-
tion that fruit from a single bloom date, with a
uniform age at harvest and very similar environment
during development, will have uniform maturity at
harvest. If this is not the instance, then it will be a
useful finding in itself, and will show the need for
research into sources of variability. If fruit of a sin-
gle age are uniform with respect to each index of
quality, it will simplify efforts to inter-relate these
quality parameters. It will also allow a more direct
application of the results gained from comparing
fruit of different ages (bloom dates) to the question
of when to harvest for the best product quality.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
Experimental plot management
The principal experiment was in the 1995/96 season
at the New Zealand Institute for Crop & Food Re-
search Limited's site at Hawke's Bay Research
Centre, near Hastings, New Zealand. A few prelimi-
nary fruit growth and quality data were obtained
from a very similar planting in the 1994/95 season.
The trials were the second and third successive
plantings of processing tomatoes ('Cannery Row')
in the test plots, in a Mangateretere silt loam with a
topsoil pH of 5.7.
Plants were grown in beds 12 m long, 1 m wide,
and 15 cm high, with 0.2 m between beds. The spac-
ing between plants after thinning was 30 cm, equiva-
lent to 26 000 plants/ha. Plants were side dressed
with 80 kg N/ha in 1994/95 and, before the 1995/96
season, the beds received 15.4 kg/m2 compost made
from fish and wood waste (AGROW Co.).
Plots were trickle irrigated and the experiment
included moderate soil water deficit (SWD) treat-
ments (50-120 mm/m deficits during periods of 2 or
4 weeks), to allow controlled study of the effects of
SWD on root growth and fruit quality, reported else-
where (Reid & Renquist 1997). The treatments re-
ported here each included all irrigation regimes. As
a part ofthat aspect of the trial, all plots were cov-
ered with ventilated rain exclusion shelters for 14
weeks. Although these reduced solar radiation some-
what, there was no effect on key fruit quality param-
eters such as °Brix, when fruit from inside and
outside the shelters were compared.
The ripening promoter ethephon was used, to
keep results in these experiments relevant to com-
mercial production practices and quality measures.
This is usually applied c. 18 days before expected
harvest and after the fruit population meets specified
maturity criteria. It was applied at a rate of 2.5 li-
tres/ha only 14 days before harvest, since the
polyethylene rain cover enhanced its effect. Early
research with ethephon showed that it did not change
Renquist & Reid—Quality of processing tomato
the acidity or soluble solids content of fruit at har-
vest (Splittstoesser & Vandemark 1971).
Experimental treatments
To denote fruit from each bloom time, polyethylene
tags of a particular colour were attached around
pedicels of 100 flowers which opened on the same
day in each of the 12 plots, termed a cohort. The date
of the first cohort, when there was an average of five
flowering trusses per plant, was dictated by the start
of the soil water deficit treatments. The other three
cohorts were tagged at about weekly intervals in the
same 6-m section of each of the 12 plots, making a
total of 400 tagged flowers out of an estimated 2500-
3000 total flowers in a 6-m row section.
Although these treatments were designed in part
to compare the quality of fruit of different ages, it
should be noted that these comparisons are differ-
ent than in past trials which compared fruit age at
harvest. Such comparisons involved harvesting
multiple samples from the same planting to compare
average ages of the whole fruit population (e.g.,
Battilani 1994). When using cohorts, both the age
of each fruit and the timing of its development in
relation to plant development are known, so age is
expressed in terms of cohort bloom date, days be-
fore harvest (DBH).
The SWD treatments applied to the plantings
rarely altered the fruit growth (set, size, and yield)
or quality variables in these trials significantly, and
no interaction with the irrigation treatment was de-
tected by Analysis of Variance (not shown here).
Therefore, the three SWD treatments were combined
for the purpose of comparing cohort timing effects
on fruit growth and quality. The number of replicates
per cohort treatment therefore increased from 4 to
12. We continued to use Two-Way Analyses of
Variance, appropriate for the original Randomised
Complete Block Design.
Fruit growth and quality measurements
During fruit growth, skin colour of 36 fruit from one
cohort was periodically measured with a portable
Hunterlab MiniScan XE, set to the dimensionless
tristimulus colour space coordinates L* a* b*. This
CIELAB scale is the official CIE update of the
Hunter "L a b" scale, still in wide commercial use
on tomatoes (Hunter & Yeatman 1961). Both of
these scales are successful for use with tomato col-
our measurement, even though the predominant
current view is that most food products are best
measured using Chroma and hue angle (Lch scale).
The visual colours associated with a* (the green to
163
red axis) and a*/b* (the b* axis incorporates yellow
colour) are given in a footnote to Table 2.
When fruit were harvested they were sorted into
cohorts to allow fruit set, yield, and average size to
be calculated. Fruit set was the percent of the origi-
nal 100 tagged flowers per plot which developed into
fruit. Fruit size is given as mean weight, calculated
as total weight per plot divided by fruit number. Fruit
yields were expressed as grams per 100 flowers and
were not normalised with regard to the total number
of fruit setting during the week surrounding each
bloom date.
Fruit quality analyses followed the standard ana-
lytical procedures used in the laboratory of Heinz-
Wattie Foods in Hastings, from the Official Methods
of Analysis manual (AOAC 1970). This involved
heating fruit by microwave oven to 94°C, termed the
"hot break" method, to stop enzyme activity and
separation of serum from solids. This is required for
measurement of viscosity in fruit homogenate (pu-
ree). Evaporated water was replaced and samples
cooled to 20°C for analysis.
Tests for °Brix, total solids, titratable acidity, and
pH were performed on fruit homogenate, sometimes
termed puree, single-strength juice or pulp, which
was formed by blending the heated samples in a food
processor for 40 s. Acidity (citric acid equivalent)
was measured by titration using 0AN sodium hy-
droxide against a 9:1 dilution of tomato puree sam-
ples. °Brix was measured with an Atago
refractometer, and pH with a glass electrode meter.
Total solids (dry mass) was calculated by oven dry-
ing screened puree at 70°C.
Puree colour and gross viscosity (Bostwick flow)
require a very uniform puree. This was achieved
using a pulper-finisher machine, which removes
seeds and skin pieces with a 0.838 mm mesh size
screen. This screen size is used by convention at
several research pilot plants (e.g., Liu & Luh 1977).
We measured gross viscosity with a Long Bostwick
50 cm acrylic trough, designed for use on fresh pu-
ree at the University of California (Wolcott et al.
1987). This gives an accurate prediction of paste
viscosity, measured by the Bostwick Consistometer
(Gould 1974), the standard instrument of tomato
processors. The unit of measure for the Long
Bostwick values is cm of flow of a 126 ml sample
along a level surface, over a time of 30 s. Higher
flows correspond to lower viscosity. Colour of
screened puree was measured through a thin glass
sheet with the same Hunterlab meter used for skin
colour. The visual colours associated with a* and a*/
b* values are given in a footnote to Table 2.
164 New Zealand Journal of Crop and Horticultural Science, 1998, Vol. 26

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Flowers opened over a period of more than 40 days,
although the large majority of bloom occurred within
3 weeks. This began about a week before the bloom
date of Cohort 1 and ended at the time of Cohort 3.
Past cultivar trials found that 'Cannery Row' is of
intermediate rank in this important processing trait
of having a short period of fruit ripening (Dadomo
etal. 1994).
Fruit growth
Overall growth and yield in the trials were good, with
fruit yields averaging 107.6 t/ha in 1995 and 107.3
t/ha in 1996. There were significant differences be-
tween cohorts for all three growth variables: fruit set,
fruit size, and yield per 100 flowers (Table 1). Re-
sults for all three variables in the 1994/95 planting
were very similar to those shown here. Fruit set dis-
played a dramatic decline from 55 to 60% in the first
cohort to < 20% for the next three cohorts. This same
pattern was observed in the 1994/95 season trial. The
period of highest % fruit set for 'Cannery Row'
appears to include flowers on about the first 10
trusses (based on Table 1, the previous season's truss
data, and unpublished data from the 1996/97 season,
when cohorts from the 1-2 truss and 9-10 truss
stages also had fruit set in the 55-60% range). Simi-
lar fruiting trends in relation to truss number were
reported for "truss efficiency" in two cultivars, de-
fined as the ratio of fruit/flower numbers per truss
(Julian 1990). As in our trials, Julian found a decline
in truss efficiency after the 10-12 truss stage.
Mean fruit size decreased significantly after the
first cohort in both seasons (Table 1). Fruit yield is
expressed as g/100 flowers tagged, so it is strongly
influenced by the percent fruit set as well as by fruit
size. It displayed the same trend as those two meas-
ures (Table 1). Although yields dropped from 4 to
4.5 kg/100 flowers in Cohort 1 to < 1.0 kg/100 flow-
ers for later cohorts, it should be remembered that
there are more trusses and many more flowers open-
ing in the mid season (Cohorts 2-3) than in the early
bloom period.
Fruit quality
One of our objectives was to test the assumption of
uniform maturity within each cohort. In terms of the
most used indicator of harvest maturity, skin colour,
this assumption proved invalid. This reveals a prob-
lem with terminology, in the sense that crop matu-
rity is sometimes defined in terms of age, such as
days from planting or full bloom. All fruit in a co-
hort are of identical age and, by that definition,
would be incorrectly considered identical in matu-
rity. Uniformity with respect to the third usage of the
term maturity, as a measure of internal quality in
response to ripening, was not addressed in this study,
since fruit quality was not contrasted among colour-
class sub-samples within each cohort (they were
often too small for analysis).
The measurement of skin colour for Cohort 2 fruit
on the vine (used for Fig. 1) revealed that even
though the mean colour increased smoothly, colour
was quite variable in the first half of the fruit devel-
opment period. At harvest time, fruit in each cohort
were divided into three colour grades before count-
ing and weighing. Cohorts 1-3 were quite uniformly
red, with 97,94, and 94% red fruit, respectively. The
remaining 3% of Cohort 1 fruit were turning-red,
whereas Cohorts 2 and 3 each had 4% turning-red

Table 1 Fruit set, fruit size, and fruit yield per 100 flowers in 'Cannery Row'
tomato (Lycoperscion esculentum (L.)) plants, comparing four cohorts (sets of
flowers from one bloom time, denoted as days before harvest, DBH). Number
of flower trusses/plant at each cohort bloom time is also given.

Cohort number
1 2 3 4 LSDf P
Cohort DBH 82 76 70 63 _ _
Trusses/plant 5 12 17 20-25* — —
Fruit set (%)$ 58.0 18.7 15.2 13.8 6.56 O.001
Fruit size (g) 75.7 58.6 55.7 45.8 9.11 <0.001
Fruit yield (g) 4446 1113 882 688 663 <0.001
+
LSD values are from Two-Way ANOVA, for a probability of 0.05.
^Plants were too large for a precise count.
^Analysis of percent data was unchanged by transformation.
Renquist & Reid—Quality of processing tomato 165

30 T and 2% green fruit. Cohort 4 had the greatest vari-

ability, with 82% red, 8% turning-red, and 10%
green fruit.
20 Total solids (dry mass as a percent of fresh mass)
is a fruit quality factor which also constitutes a yield
CÖ
factor in terms of tomato paste production. A com-
parison of fruit from the four bloom times (Table 2)
.O 10 showed that total solids was highest in Cohort 4, the
O fruit which was youngest at the time of harvest. The
lowest % solids was in Cohort 1, in which fruit were
ü 0 nearly all red and a portion had also softened and
were more juicy when cut. One explanation of the
lower solids in Cohort 1 would be a dilution type
-10 1 1 1 1 mechanism whereby water uptake as a fruit devel-
ops exceeds the production of sugars and organic
30 40 50 60 70 80 acids. The 18% of unripe fruit in Cohort 4 would not
Days after anthesis have undergone this change. However, the actual
increase in the bulk water content of screened tomato
puree during the final 7 weeks of ripening, reported
skin puree skin(h) by Mitchell et al. (1991), was from 93 to 94.5%.
Although this could account for 1.5% increase in
solids over 7 weeks (about equal to the difference
between Cohorts 1 and 4), the age difference be-
Fig. 1 Tomato (Lycoperscion esculentum (L.)) skin and
tween these two cohorts was only 3 weeks. Alterna-
puree colour (a* is the green to red axis of the L*a*b* tively, this difference in % solids, which is large from
scale) as a function of fruit age. Skin colour was meas- the perspective of the processor, may be inherent in
ured 5 times with fruit still on the plants of Cohort 2 the populations of fruit which set at the time of the
(squares) and at harvest on the four cohorts of varying two cohorts (e.g., a different ratio of pericarp to
bloom times (triangles). The trend for puree colour change locule volume, since mean fruit size differed consid-
(circles) is a composite of four positive a* values (pink to erably). A third possibility is that it may be a func-
red colour) from sequential harvests, and two estimated
negative a* points (green colour) based on many other tion of the greater ethephon-accelerated ripening of
measurements of a* for green fruit puree. Cohort 4.

Table 2 Processing quality indices for (Lycoperscion esculentum (L.)) 'Cannery Row' fruit from
four bloom times. LSD (P = 0.05) values are from ANOVA.

Cohort number
1 2 3 4 LSD P

Total solids (%) 5.5 5.8 6.0 6.7 0.44 <0.001

°Brix 5.4 5.7 5.5 6.3 0.31 O.001
Titratable acidity (%) 0.25 0.28 0.28 0.35 0.03 <0.001
PH 4.39 4.27 4.37 4.27 0.24 0.602
Bostwick (cm/30 s) 18.2 16.8 16.7 14.9 1.32 <0.001
Skin colour (a*)t 27.6 26.6 25.6 18.8 3.1 <0.001
Puree colour (a*)* 12.7 12.4 12.4 11.4 1.45 0.352
Skin colour (a*/b*)t 0.849 0.816 0.761 0.536 0.093 <0.001
Puree colour (a*/b*)* 0.764 0.757 0.794 0.662 0.096 0.047
^Approximate values for visual skin colour (a*, a*/b*) are: green (-7, -0.4), first orange on green
(both near zero), turning-red (5-12, 0.2-0.4), maximum red (31,1.0).
^Values for puree colour (a*, a*/b*) from fruit with the same four skin colours are: green (-5, -0.3),
first orange on green (both near zero), turning-red (3-8, 0.3-0.5), maximum red (15, 1.0).
166 New Zealand Journal of Crop and Horticultural Science, 1998, Vol. 26
Soluble solids, measured as °Brix, are a large frac-
tion of the total solids in tomato. °Brix is an indica-
tor of sweetness, although sugars are not the sole
soluble component it measures. Variation in °Brix
among cohorts (Table 2) closely parallels that of total
solids, with the fruit of Cohort 1 having the lowest
°Brix and the last cohort the highest. Although late-
setting fruit does not make a large contribution to
total yield, it is important to know why it had higher
°Brix.
The °Brix level in relation to tomato ripeness
stage has been measured many times and may help
clarify this cohort finding. Green fruit has usually
had lower °Brix than the turning-red stages (Salunkhe
et al. 1974), although it also has the highest variabil-
ity (Young et al. 1993). Reports on the change in
°Brix from the turning-red stages to the red-ripe
stage are contradictory, however. Harvest manage-
ment by processors appears to assume that °Brix
continues to increase to the red-ripe stage. However,
reports of decreased levels in ripe fruit, discussed in
the Introduction, appear to dominate current research
findings (e.g., Barrett 1996). We measured °Brix in
the 1994/95 season in relation to colour stage in
'Cannery Row' and two tomato breeding lines. In
all three, the maximum °Brix was in the turning-red
stages and °Brix decreased in the ripest stage (data
not shown). How this relates to the higher °Brix in
Cohort 4 versus 1-3 is not clear. Two possibilities
for further research are that °Brix were higher in
Cohort 4 as a result of the higher amount of green
and turning-red fruit, or to the lack of fruit at the soft
red-ripe stage. In addition, re-investigating the effect
of ethephon on internal quality (Splittstoesser &
Vandemark 1971), using fruit age cohorts, could be
illuminating.
Viscosity is the most important quality factor for
assessing some products made from tomato paste.
The Table 2 pattern of relative cohort quality for
viscosity (high Bostwick means low viscosity) is:
lowest quality in Cohort 1, the two middle cohorts
intermediate and not significantly different, and the
highest viscosity in the last cohort. Although this
finding of highest fruit quality in Cohort 4 is the
same as for % total solids and °Brix, the cause may
be different. The 19% green and colour-turning fruit
in the samples could have a larger direct effect on
viscosity, since it is likely to be more sensitive to
their lower water content or different water distri-
bution.
The cohort trend for titratable acidity (Table 2)
was the same as for viscosity: lowest quality in the
first cohort and highest in the last. The pH values,
in contrast, were too variable for a trend to be iden-
tified, which has also been widely reported in find-
ings on pH response to other factors (Davies &
Hobson 1981). That same review found more con-
sistent effects of various factors on titratable acid-
ity. It may prove more useful than pH for modelling
the effect of bloom time on fruit quality. However,
it is important to know how to manage tomato crops
to keep pH below a critical level for safe process-
ing. 'Cannery Row', which is a good cultivar in
terms of °Brix and viscosity (Dadomo et al. 1994),
is marginal for pH in New Zealand conditions and
will benefit from a better understanding of influences
onpH.
Skin colour was measured as the tristimulus value
a* or the ratio of the two values a*/b* (Table 2, foot-
note). The average skin colours of fruit from Cohorts
1-3 were all full red, whereas the average of Cohort
4 fruit was a lighter shade of red. Much of the popu-
lation of fruit from Cohort 4 was as red as that of
the other cohorts, but the average was lowered by
the 10% which were still visually green. Puree col-
our (Table 2) was not significantly different among
the four cohorts on the green to red axis (a*), but
Cohort 4 a*/b* was lower than Cohorts 1-3, indi-
cating higher yellowness in the puree. The signifi-
cance of these findings on colour is that the higher
fruit quality in Cohort 4 with reference to most in-
ternal factors is not accompanied by a large reduc-
tion in red colour, which is also a key processing
quality parameter.
Colour change as a predictor of quality
Figure 1 illustrates how the skin a* values of cohorts
at harvest related to the changing skin colour of
'Cannery Row' fruit while they were still attached.
Values changed from negative to positive as green
fruit first began to change colour. The skin a* val-
ues for the four cohorts all fit well with the curve in
Fig. 1 (note that the values for days before harvest
in Table 2 equal days after anthesis in Fig. 1, al-
though actual dates differ for each cohort). A plot
of puree colour had the same shape (circles in Fig.
1), but with maximum a* below 15, rather than 30.
The shape of the curve is very similar to that obtained
by Young et al. (1993) when they used regression
analysis to relate a large data set of puree colour to
days after anthesis. Ripening processes in tomatoes
have been found to change in concert with increased
red skin colour (e.g., Stenvers & Stork 1976). The
small difference in red colour between Cohort 4 fruit
and the earlier-set fruit may reflect cohort differences
in internal quality. Young et al. ( 1993) found that the
Renquist & Reid—Quality of processing tomato
quality indices of % total solids, °Brix, and acidity
all decreased significantly in red ripe fruit. Also, a
very recent study of maturity effects on paste qual-
ity in seven cultivars concluded that most attributes
were more desirable at the "pink" (30-60% red col-
our) stage and declined with maturity (Barrett 1996).
It would be unwise to use this data set to draw
conclusions which explain cohort fruit quality dif-
ferences strictly in terms of maturity, however, since
the assumption that fruit of the same age are of uni-
form maturity proved invalid for the last-blooming
cohort. Although it seems plausible that the superior
fruit homogenate quality from Cohort 4 was because
of the lower maturity, it will be more conclusive if
the treatment samples are selected for uniformity of
a trait such as fruit firmness or skin/internal colour.
It is also likely that three colour/ripeness grades are
not enough to pinpoint key stages with peak (or
declining) quality for each parameter. For instance,
quality measures in softening red ripe fruit may be
quite different from firm red ripe fruit.
The finding that uniform fruit age does not equate
with uniform harvest maturity requires that addi-
tional research be done into the causes of variabil-
ity. Two possible sources are the position of a fruit
within a truss, where the first-set fruit may be more
competitive and mature faster (Julian 1990), and the
position of a truss within the canopy, which would
affect both carbohydrate competition and fruit
micro-environment (Orzolek & Angell 1975). The
effect of truss position (and indirectly fruit age) has
been investigated by use of the concept of "truss
arc", which groups trusses into typically four arcs
based on the morphological distance from the crown
of the plant. One study of fruit quality categorised
fruit into four arcs during each of three harvest dates
(Alvino et al. 1988) and found that the overall suit-
ability for processing was superior on the earliest of
the three dates, which is in line with results of Wight
et al. (1962) and Battilani (1994). But the Alvino
study pinpointed the quality decline in later harvests
as being in truss arc 1 (the first 1-3 trusses) and truss
arc 4 (the last-formed trusses, where new green fruit
begin to develop if harvest is relatively late). Fruit
in truss arc 1 would have been the most mature,
which fits the findings of decreasing quality with
ripening (Young et al. 1993; Barrett 1996). It may
be necessary to study truss position more quantita-
tively than the truss arc method allows to determine
the effect within identical-aged flower cohorts.
167
CONCLUSIONS
The findings of Young et al. (1993) and Barrett
(1996) suggest that the differences we found in fruit
quality between bloom time cohorts may arise, in
part, from maturity differences similar to those
which occur with ripening of a fruit population.
However, these differences in quality could not be
related simply to fruit colour (one index of maturity)
as a result of the lack of colour uniformity in the
latest-setting cohort. It will also be necessary to fur-
ther clarify the effects of fruit position on a truss and
truss position in the canopy, along with processing
quality comparisons among sets of fruit specifically
selected for a particular indicator of maturity (col-
our, softness, respiration rate, or internal ethylene).
Our findings, with the support of those cited from
other research, point to the need to reassess whether
the current definition of "harvest maturity", usually
based on the time of minimum discard of green,
overripe, and diseased fruit, needs to be redefined
with more weight given to product quality. The likely
effect would be a need for earlier harvest. There are
two possible obstacles, however. One is the tomato
product quality requirement for bright red colour.
Unlike most other parameters, colour usually con-
tinues to improve with maturity (Liu & Luh 1977).
Our results with this cultivar did not show that a
significantly lower red colour accompanied the
higher internal quality in the late-setting fruit of
Cohort 4, but further studies are needed to determine
if acceptable colour can be achieved despite earlier
harvest. The other concern (for growers) is that
whereas quality is improved for the processor, fruit
yield may be reduced. All of the above factors will
need to be integrated into crop management, process-
ing logistics, and tomato breeding programmes in
order to fully realise the potential gains from better
understanding the relationships among fruit quality
parameters.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We sincerely thank the people who assisted in these ex-
periments: Brian Rogers, Carol Wright, Phillipa Page,
Isabelle Sorensen, and Richard Agnew.
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