Abstract:
Quince fruit has many benefits to human health and is an excellent source of pectin for
jellies and jam industry. The objective of the present research was to study fruit physiochemical
attributes of some quince genotypes at harvest and their changes during cold
storage. The fruit of 15 genotypes were harvested at optimum maturity and stored for 0,
30, 60, 90 and 120 days in cold storage and some parameters were measured. The range of
13.00-18.76% for Soluble Solid Content (SSC), 0.38-0.95% for titratable acidity, 2.55-3.75
for pH, 52.16-91.00 N for firmness, 0.89-0.98 g cm-3 for density, 255.39-349.56 mg 100 g-1
DM for carbohydrate, 7.28-23.02% for pectin and 11.66-33.30% for fruit fibers were
observed across genotypes at harvest time. Negative correlations were found between
weight loss and both firmness and density, while firmness had positive correlation with
pectin and Ca content. Generally, significant changes (P 0.05) for measured characters
were observed across genotypes and during cold storage, but the rate of changes varied
according to genotypes. It was found that each studied genotype had one or more unique
character such as lowest weight loss in ‘Paveh 1’, highest fruit firmness retaining in
‘Marivan1’, highest pectin in ‘Marivan 1’ and highest SSC in ‘Marivan 2’, that are
promising for fruit breeding in future programs.
Keyword: Firmness, Fruit quality, Pectin, Postharvest.
