Low dose gamma irradiation does not affect the quality, proximate or nutritional profile of ‘Brigitta’ blueberry and ‘Maravilla’ raspberry fruit

Abstract Blueberry (Northern Highbush, cv ‘Brigitta’) and raspberry (cv ‘Maravilla’) fruit were subject to low dose gamma irradiation (0, 150, 400 and 1000 Gy) and stored at 0 °C for three or ten days (blueberry) and two or seven days (raspberry) to determine the effects of irradiation on fruit quality and nutritional and proximate contents. In general, none of the irradiation doses (≤1000 Gy) significantly affected blueberry or raspberry fruit quality (overall fruit quality, colour, firmness, weight loss, TSS, TA levels or TSS/TA ratio), or the nutritional or proximate content (ash, carbohydrate, dietary fibre, energy, moisture, protein, sodium, potassium, total sugars, fructose, ascorbic acid, monomeric anthocyanin, citric and malic acids). The length of time in storage affected some fruit quality and nutritional and proximate content parameters (such as overall fruit quality, firmness, weight loss, TA levels, dietary fibre, potassium, ascorbic acid, citric and malic acids), with longer storage periods resulting in lower quality fruit, irrespective of irradiation treatment. No interaction was detected between the effects of irradiation treatment and storage time, indicating that the storage effect was consistent for all irradiation doses on both blueberry and raspberry fruit quality.