QUALITY OF PEACH AND NECTARINE FRUIT COMMERCIALIZED IN ROMAGNA (ITALY): A TWO-YEAR SURVEY

Fruit quality of Integrated Peach Production in Romagna (Po Valley, Italy) was investigated in 1999 and 2000 on the same 54 peach and nectarine cultivars. Each year more than 3,000 commercially mature peach and nectarine 15-30 fruit samples, handled by two important Italian packing-houses, were analyzed by Pimprenelle automated laboratory (SETOP, France). For each fruit (about 100,000 in the two years), Pimprenelle measured the weight, the soluble sugars content, the flesh firmness and, on the juice expressed by the entire sample, the titratable acidity (TA). With the exception of TA, all the characteristics assessed were significantly affected by the year. Compared to peaches, nectarines generally showed greater flesh firmness, higher soluble sugar and titratable acidity percentage. Fruits of white fleshed cultivars resulted in significantly heavier, sweeter, less acid and softer characteristics than in yellow fleshed ones. Soluble sugar content and weight of the fruit were associated positively (with an R(2) around 20%). In the two years of survey, although more than 90% of the fruit tested resulted in satisfactory size (>C, international size code) and soluble sugar content (>7 °Brix measured by Pimprenelle), firmness of about 50% of the fruit was too high (<5 kg/cm2). This study showed there is already the technical potentiality in Romagna to produce high sanitary and organoleptic quality fruit, though a further rationalization of harvest criteria is needed to improve the percentage of fruits satisfying high quality requisites.