Measuring Quality and Maturity

Visual evaluation of quality characteristics by an expert judge, despite limitations, is still a widely used and accepted technique. Numerical scales for specific attributes are available for commodities when no chemical or physical measure is available that relates to a specific purchase characteristic. Such scales are treated as objective measures, but they suffer from many of the problems of sensory analysis without having many of the safeguards of those techniques. Sensory evaluation incorporates a much wider range of senses than merely taste. Taste is the sense that detects chemical properties of foods in the mouth in the absence of aroma. Usually considered to be limited to sweet, sour, salty, and bitter sensations, taste is probably more complex. Maturity of a crop is an assessment of physiological development. Physiological maturity is described as the stage of development when a plant or plant part will continue ontogeny even if detached. Whereas, commercial maturity is define as the stage of development when a plant or plant part possesses the prerequisites for utilization by consumers for a particular purpose. Maturity of a crop at harvest directly affects the color and size of an item, and thus its grade. Other important quality characteristics such as texture, flavor, and nutrient content, as well as perishability and susceptibility to adverse handling and storage conditions, are a function of harvest maturity.