Sensory quality is important in assessing cultivars for fresh consumption as well as for the processing industry. Important quality attributes for fresh consumption were found to be colour, taste, flavour and texture attributes. Strawberries (Fragaria x ananassa Duch.) have unique, highly desirable taste and flavour and are one of the most important cultivated berry fruits in Croatia. Today, consumers are increasingly better informed about diet and health, and as a result, desire more “healthy“ food, which offer high quality, safety and optimum nutrient balance. The increasing demand for organic food has focused interest based on claims that an organic product tastes “different“, is “preferred“ and is “more healthy“. It has implicit expectation that the improvement is due to the way the food is grown. The topic of organic food and organic agriculture attracts considerable public, commercial and research interest. The purpose of the present investigation was to profile the sensory characteristics of fresh fruit and its purées in two strawberry cultivars, ‘Maya’ and ‘Queen Elisa’, conventionally and organically grown in Croatia. Quantitative descriptive analysis (QDA) was used to describe the sensory properties of fresh fruit as well as its purées. All obtained results were statistically evaluated. Conducted sensory evaluation indicated that there were slightly expressed some differences in sensory attributes observed by panelists between two different cultivars and two type of cultivation but they did not show significant differences in any sensory attribute when dealing with two different strawberry cultivars or two types of cultivation.

Strawberry; organic cultivation; conventional cultivation; sensory evaluation

Published by University of Zagreb, Faculty of Agriculture, Zagreb, CROATIA
Sponsored by Ministry Science and Education of the Republic of Croatia