UK supermarket firmness requirements

UK supermarkets use firmness measurements as an important tool to determine eating quality.  We submitted ‘Royal Gala’, ‘Granny Smith’ and ‘Golden Delicious’ in four firmness categories to a sensory panel to quantify the eating quality of fruit with various firmnesses.

Fruit were donated by Capespan and submitted to a sensory panel at CCFRA Technology Ltd to determine the acceptability of fruit with various firmnesses for consumption.  Fruit were evaluated according to external and internal appearance, odour, flavour and texture. In most of the cases, the lowest and highest firmnesses scored lower points than the middle categories when based on texture  During the next season, we will have to compare the chosen categories with the preferred firmnesses to those of the UK supermarkets to determine whether we can convince the supermarkets to allow lower firmness levels without compromising eating quality. We also need the following season’s data to determine how the possible seasonal changes in firmness levels may affect the sensory evaluation during two consecutive seasons.