The Importance of Maintaining Flavor Quality of Fresh Vegetables

Although consumers often base their purchase decisions on external appearance (e.g., color, size, shape, and freedom from defects), texture, firmness, and aroma, high quality FLAVOR is arguably the most important factor leading to satisfied and repeat customers. However, while much work has been conducted optimizing and improving the shelf life of fresh vegetables on the basis of appearance and firmness, evaluation of shelf life in terms of flavor quality and flavor retention (flavor life) has been largely neglected until only recently. For example, flavor is not included in the USDA grade standards for any vegetable. One reason may be that flavor is difficult to measure. The balance of sugar to acid is known to be an important measurement related to flavor and is often used as an indication of maturity in fruits. However, while it is relatively easy to measure sugar and acid content of various commodities, the unique flavor of a commodity is really a complex interaction between these and hundreds of other non-volatile and volatile (i.e., aroma) compounds. These give rise to the overall perception of taste: aroma, sweetness, sourness, bitterness, astringency, pungency, hotness or burning, etc.