PERCEPTION OF MEALINESS IN APPLES - A COMPARISON OF CONSUMERS AND TRAINED ASSESSORS

The Repertory Grid method was used to aid consumers in developing a vo cabulary to describe the sensory characteristics perceived from sample s of three varieties of apples (Cox, Jonagold and Boskoop) from three different harvest dates each (early, middle, and late harvest). The ai ms of this work were to study whether consumers perceived different de grees of mealiness and to compare the perceptual spaces of samples obt ained from consumer data and from conventional profiling with a traine d panel, using Generalized Procrustes analysis. The relative positions of samples were similar for the consumers and the trained assessors' consensus spaces but the latter resulted in a better separation of sam ples. Boskoop samples were perceived as more acid, astringent. crispy and hard while the Cox variety was described as sweeter and more flour y. Jonagold samples were perceived as juicier and occupied an intermed iate position, with the mealy Jonagold sample closer to the Cox sample s. The agreement between sample spaces showed that both panels perceiv ed the major differences between samples in a similar way but the trai ned panel was able to differentiate further, mainly between the textur e characteristics.