Determination of Impact Bruising Susceptibility ofNew Apple Cultivars

摘要

Aim of this experimental study is to compare the different level of sensibility to impactdamage of apple cultivars, inserted in the finalized project "Fruit varieties list " financed by theItalian Agricultural Ministry. The innovative idea was the addition of impact damage susceptibilityevaluation, to the most common quality analysis, as this parameter is an important factor of qualityand subsequently economic loss. Moreover a particular attention was directed to the definition ofthresholds and limits not to overcome in the operational realities of fruit and vegetables chain, foreach single cultivar. The purpose is to give orientations to producers in order to allow them thechoice of the most adaptable varieties to the Italian reality, characterized by extremelyheterogeneous soils and climatic conditions.During the 3 years of experimentation 40 varieties (50 fruits/cultivar) were tested and some werere-tested each year. Each fruit was submitted to impact under controlled conditions and differentimpact, morphological and textural variables, potentially involved with damage expression, weremeasured. A logistic model was applied and it resulted a powerful method in describing therelationships between damage and morphological-impact variables and to discriminate impactsusceptibility between cultivars. To simplify the evaluation through the model, a single value wasextracted, corresponding to the drop height for which a 10% damage probability is expected (DropDamage Index-DDI).