SENSORY QUALITY AND CHEMICAL-COMPOSITION IN CARROTS - A MULTIVARIATE STUDY

Carrots from designed trials and organic and conventional farms were a nalysed for sensory quality and chemical composition. The data were co mbined in principal component analyses and partial least squares regre ssion for exploration of the main factors responsible for the variatio n in quality. One of the most important factors was fertilization. Car rots grown with no fertilizer and carrots fertilized with 40-80 kg nit rogen ha(-1) as mineral fertilizer or 20-72 tons ha(-1) of organic fer tilizer contained more total sugars and total flavour strength, less c rispness, crude protein, true protein and carotene, and had a lower pH , compared with carrots fertilized with 100-192 kg nitrogen ha(-1) as mineral fertilizer. Location site was also very important in the expla nation of the total variation and was a composite factor of precipitat ion, temperature in June, growth system and length of growth period. S oil type, amount of organic fertilizer, use of pesticides and temperat ures in July and August seemed to be of less importance.