Fruit quality assessment of some Romanian pear cultivars

Abstract

Similar to apple, pear is one of the most important horticultural crops with high nutritional and economical value. The biological and economic traits of the specie, as well as the fruits quality, make the pear growing much appreciated and to be given an increasing importance. Five pear cultivars ('Paramis', 'Paradox', 'Paradise', 'Isadora', 'Pandora') registered in the last period by Research Institute for Fruit Growing Pitesti, Romania and one selection 'SP06C2P5' ('Packham’s Triumph' x 'Monica') were investigated regarding their physical-chemical parameters. Fruits quality attributes were determined by the external (weight, size, skin lightness) and internal (firmness, total soluble solids, acidity, pH). Observations and determinations were made in the season of 2019, 2020 and 2021, in field trial planted in 2016. For this study, comparisons were made with 'Monica', the most spread bred Romanian cultivar. Significant differences were encountered among the different cultivars for most of the quantitative characters, such as fruit weight, caliber, lightness, total soluble solids (TSS) and acidity. Based on these results, ‘Pandora’ cv. had the highest annual average of weight (243.17g), ‘Isadora’ cv. the highest amount of TSS (14.63%), ‘SP06C2P5’ the highest amount of malic (0.74%), citric (0.71%) and tartric acid (0.80%). The data referring to the external and internal fruit quality traits of new bred Romanian pear cultivars are useful for growers, but also to enrich germplasm collection and to select proper parents for breeding.

Keywords

• pyrus
• size
• firmness
• lightness
• soluble solids content
• acidity