The effect of cultivation type and cultivar on sensory characteristics of fresh strawberry and their purées

Strawberries are highly valuated for their sweetness, highly desirable taste and flavour, pleasant colour and are one of the most important cultivated berry fruit in Croatia. It is widely accepted that consumer acceptance of foods is mainly determined by their sensory perception which is increasingly being used as a tool to qualify and quantify certain food properties. Important quality attributes for fresh fruit consumption were found to be colour, taste, flavour and texture attributes. Some studies have reported that organic foods themselves are more nutritious and tastier than conventionally grown products. The topic of organic food and organic agriculture attracts considerable public, commercial and research interest so the purpose of the present investigation was to profile the sensory characteristics of fresh fruit and their purees in two strawberry cultivars, Elsanta and Marmolada, grown in conventional and organic cultivation in Croatia. Quantitative descriptive analysis was used to describe the sensory properties of fresh fruit as well as their purees. All obtained results were statistically evaluated. Conducted sensory evaluation indicated that organic cultivation and cultivar Marmolada had positive influence on colour in all investigated samples. The most common sensory attributes which make variations between cultivation types and cultivars are found to be fruity flavour, odour intensity, sweet, sour and harmonic taste in fresh samples, and strawberry aroma, greeny flavour, sour, sweet, sour and harmonic taste, homogeneous texture and viscosity in purees. No influence of cultivation type or cultivar was observed with respect to fresh samples and purees in sensory attributes such as flowery and earthy flavour, off-flavour, odour intensity and off-odour.