Perception of mealiness in apples: a comparison of consumers and trained assessors

Abstract

  The Repertory Grid method was used to aid consumers in developing a vocabulary to describe the sensory characteristics perceived from samples of three varieties of apples (Cox, Jonagold and Boskoop) from three different harvest dates each (early, middle, and late harvest). The aims of this work were to study whether consumers perceived different degrees of mealiness and to compare the perceptual spaces of samples obtained from consumer data and from conventional profiling with a trained panel, using Generalized Procrustes analysis. The relative positions of samples were similar for the consumers and the trained assessors' consensus spaces but the latter resulted in a better separation of samples. Boskoop samples were perceived as more acid, astringent, crispy and hard while the Cox variety was described as sweeter and more floury. Jonagold samples were perceived as juicier and occupied an intermediate position, with the mealy Jonagold sample closer to the Cox samples. The agreement between sample spaces showed that both panels perceived the major differences between samples in a similar way but the trained panel was able to differentiate further, mainly between the texture characteristics.