Bruin verkleuren en slap worden van sperziebonen : September 2016

Browning is considered to be the most important quality-limiting factor in green beans for both the fresh and cut bean markets. For the fresh market, we determined the duration at which green beans can be stored at optimal and suboptimal temperatures while retaining an acceptable quality. Furthermore we assessed the effects of bean surface moisture and a decontaminating washing step on bean browning during storage. For cut bean market, we determined the duration green beans can be stored at 3°C prior to cutting and packaging and still retain an acceptable quality after a 7 day shelf life period. The experiments were carried out using both the fresh market cultivar ‘Domino’ and the cut market cultivar ‘Stanley’. Besides browning, the occurrence of loss of firmness limited the quality of fresh beans considerably. Both cultivars were able to cope with 2 days storage at 3 - 9°C while retaining an acceptable quality. Despite ‘Domino’ having a better quality score than ‘Stanley’, both cultivars obtained an acceptable score. For ‘Domino’ loss of firmness was the most important factor limiting quality, while in ‘Stanley’ browning was more limiting. Both cultivars could not withstand 4 days of storage without loss of quality. Bean surface moisture due to condensation or washing limited browning, but increased loss of firmness. Decontaminating the beans did not influence the quality of fresh green beans. Neither washing, condensation or decontamination affected the percentage of intact beans. Concerning cut and packaged beans, the maximum storage time of green beans at 3°C prior to cutting and packing, followed by a shelf life of 3 days at 4°C plus 4 days at 7°C, was determined. ‘Domino’ could be stored 2 days at a maximum with an acceptable loss of quality; ‘Stanley’ resisted 4 days storage without quality loss and 7 days with an acceptable quality loss according to the standards of Bakker Barendrecht

Monitoring strawberry production to get grip on strawberry quality : GreenCHAINge Fruit & Vegetables WP3

The Greenchainge project is a large project financially supported by the industry and Foundation TKI Horticulture comprising different sub-projects focussing on different fruit and vegetable products. One of the sub-projects (work package 3) is dedicated to strawberry and is carried out with and by Driscoll’s BV, Bakker Barendrecht BV and Wageningen Food and Biobased Research (WFBR). One of the main goals of the soft fruit project is to contribute to the understanding of strawberry quality and as such pave the way towards controlling quality to supply high and constant strawberry quality. Therefore, one of the key research question in this project is which chain parameters affect quality directly. Hence, a large-scale quality monitoring research was set up together with the companies involved in the project. The main goal of this monitoring research was to get insight in the pre and post-harvest parameters that influence the quality of strawberries, meaning the quality at harvest and shelf life