Recently, the research group of fruit quality and safety at the Institute of Pomology of Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences (IP, CAAS), carried out the study on cultivar and origin authentication of ‘Fuji’ and ‘Gala’ apples from two dominant origins of China based on quality attributes. The results were published in the JCR Q1 journal Food Chemistry: X (IF: 6.5).

Apple quality is closely related to its cultivar and origin. However, the apple quality characteristics of different cultivars and origins are unclear and

the apples from different cultivars or origins can be easily mixed during harvesting and marketing. The hypothesis that some quality indicators can effectively distinguish the cultivar and origin of apples. In this study, 21 quality indicators of ‘Fuji’ and ‘Gala’ apples grown in the Loss Plateau (LP) and Bohai Bay (BB) regions were compared. Linear discriminant analysis (LDA) and multilayer perceptron neural network (MLP–NN) model were constructed for apple cultivar and origin authentication. The result indicated that 85.7% quality indicators were significantly different between ‘Fuji’ and ‘Gala’ apples from the same origin. Between LP and BB origins, there were significantly differences regarding 66.7% indicators for ‘Gala’ apple and 38.1% indicators for ‘Fuji’ apple. The discriminant accuracy of the models was above 90%, and the MLP–NN model was superior to the LDA model. The identification accuracy between cultivars was higher than that between origins. The main reason was that the single fruit weight, vitamin C, total soluble solid, soluble sugar, sweetness value, sorbitol, glucose, fructose, sucrose, malic acid, quinic acid and citric acid of ‘Fuji’ apples were significantly higher than ‘Gala’ apples. This study provides a foundation for the quality evaluation and further geographical traceability studies of apples. Further studies related to the regulatory mechanism of environmental conditions on apple quality characteristics should be explored for theoretical confirmation.

Kuang Lixue and Xu Guofeng of Institute of Pomology are the first and corresponding authors, respectively. This work was supported by the Agricultural Science and Technology Innovation Program (CAAS-ASTIP); the Natural Science Foundation Program of Liaoning Province (2023-MS-040); the Central Public-interest Scientific Institution Basal Research Fund (Y2023LM10) and the Fundamental Research Funds for Central Non-profit Scientific Institution (10182024021). Original title: Cultivar and origin authentication of ‘Fuji’ and ‘Gala’ apples from two dominant origins of China based on quality attributes

Link: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.fochx.2024.101643

By: Kuang Lixue

(kuanglixue@caas.cn)