TOMATO BIOCHEMICAL COMPOSITION AND QUALITY ATTRIBUTES IN DIFFERENT MATURITY FRUITS

Abstract

Maturity at harvest is very important attribute to tomatoes quality. This research showed that fully ripen tomato fruits had the highest amount of lycopene and β-carotene respectively 46.68 and 6.22 g kg-1. Therefore, it was determined correlation between amount of carotenoids and tomato ripening stages. Tomato fruit flesh lost it’s firmness through ripening period from 82.54 till 15.24 N cm-2. Fruit ripeness stage at harvest determines tomatoes biochemical composition and quality. Carotenoids (β-carotene, lycopene) syntheses during fruit ripening were the results of tomato colour and nutrition value changes, which results to correlation between colour indexes and tomato fruit quality attributes such as: hue angle (h°) and lycopene, colour index a* and lycopene, flesh firmness and hue angle (h°), skin firmness and chroma (C).

Keywords

• carotenoids
• maturity
• firmness
• colour
• fruit