Flesh Firmness

Transcript

DR RICHARD VOLZ (Plant & Food Research)

So with flesh firmness we take an individual apple, we peel the skin from a couple of points on the equator of that apple and we put it into a machine called a penentrometer. Basically what that penentrometer does is it lowers a probe of set size, at a set speed into the flesh part of the fruit, to a set distance. And the resistance ​pressure if you like that is exerted by the fruit is recorded by a load cell at the top of that probe, and that is converted to a number measured in kilograms force, or newtons force, and that is recorded on the computer. And that’s done usually for a couple of times for each fruit and repeated again on a number of fruit in your fruit sample.