CHARACTERIZATION OF QUALITY INDICES ON STORAGE OF PUREE OF MUTANT (DG AND OGC) AND NORMAL TOMATOES

The investigations carried out so far on high pigment tomatoes are confined to their nutritional aspects only. We present the comparative results of the first study on the kinetics of changes in chemical and sensory quality attributes in puree prepared from two colour mutants [dark green (dg) and old gold crimson (og(c))] and seven normal tomato genotypes during storage. Puree of mutant tomatoes BCT-115 and BCT-119, carrying dg and ogc genes, showed the less significant changes in TSS (7.52 and 6.02 degrees Brix), acidity (3.16 and 3.05%), pH (4.04 and 4.03), total sugar (12.4 and 11.13%), ascorbic acid (20.74 and 19.69 mg/100 g), lycopene (7.78 and 542 mg/100 g), and beta-carotene (3.08 and 2.26 mg/100 g) during two months storage at 25 degrees C. Nevertheless, puree prepared from Berika and BCT-115 (dg) had higher colour (7.63 and 7.13), taste (7.4 and 7.37) and flavour (7.3 and 7.37) sensory scores during two months of storage at 25 degrees C. These results provide new data on the effect of genotypes on the stability of quality for storage of tomato puree and insist on the utilization of these genotypes for breeding new processing cultivars in the near future.