Verify sweetest/best eating quality fresh from sun South African Golden Delicious

A medium-term promotional program was initiated to raise the awareness and increase the price of SA ‘Golden Delicious’, based on the superior eating quality of SA ‘Golden Delicious’.  This project aimed to quantify the sweetest/best eating quality/fresh from the sun status of SA ‘Golden Delicious’.

We were able to compare ‘Golden Delicious’ from France, Italy, Belgium and South Africa (SA) with each other in terms of destructive analyses for TSS and acid content.  The origins the supermarket fruit, were of course unknown.  Therefore we can only report on the variation in parameters TSS and acid between the analyses dates, between the fruit samples and within a fruit sample.  The trend was towards a higher total soluble solid (TSS) in the SA than competing fruit during the time of the surveys (May to July).  We are not able to make any assumptions regarding the effect of the origin, climate, harvesting maturity or storage conditions of the fruit.  No tasting was involved, thus the results are all quantitative.

The first sample was only taken in May 2006 due to logistics and the last sample, in May 2007 (when there were still Northern Hemisphere fruit available).

Supermarkets mainly stocked ‘Golden Delicious’ from one source. Thus the consumer will have to look for a specific supermarket to buy fruit from a chosen origin/source, or indicate their preference for SA fruit to the supermarket and convince their buyers to change from French or Italian to SA Golden Delicious suppliers.