Fruit: Factors Affecting Fruit Quality

From the standpoint of the consumer, the primary elements of fruit quality are flavor and texture. Flavor, the most complex trait, is composed of sweetness, sourness, astringency, and aroma. The factors that affect fruit quality may be considered in five categories: genetics, environment, farming practices, harvest maturity, and postharvest handling. These factors have changed markedly over the last century.

The genetic heritage of a fruit, including its variety and the rootstock on which it is grown, strongly influences its eating quality. Through the nineteenth century, most new varieties discovered by growers were the results of chance pollination and mutation. Later, as fruit breeders deliberately produced thousands of crosses and systematically selected for considerations such as size, color, yield, season, resistance to disease, and other horticultural characteristics, they inadvertently bred out flavor by not selecting for it. For example, fruit breeders have selected peach and nectarine varieties for full red skin coloration, considered an attractive commercial characteristic, although this trait appears to be genetically linked to mediocre flavor. Moreover, when a fruit is intensely flavored, such as a muscat grape, it risks offending a portion of potential buyers, a deadly offense in the modern fruit market, which seeks to appeal to the lowest common denominator by favoring bland, neutral-flavored seedless grapes. It is by no means the case, however, that heirloom varieties (types more than fifty or seventy-five years old) are invariably superior. In some instances the old varieties were good for their day, but better varieties have been developed. In other cases old varieties may have become infected by viruses, or the authentic variety may have been lost or confused over the years with mediocre seedling progeny.