The apple U-Pick market in Ohio lacks diversity in varieties to meet consumer demand outside of those typically available at grocery stores. Apple growers want new cultivars that are suited for growth in the Midwest, ripen across the picking season, and intrigue customers with unique flavors, textures, and traits. These diverse and unique tasting apples exist, but it is difficult to market these apples without a comprehensive understanding of the traits and consumer desirability of these fruits. This project aims to identify and characterize sensory traits in 33 up-and-coming apple selections including commercial, in-development, and wild varieties with novel characteristics suited for local production. Apple selections were chosen in conjunction with apple specialists at The Ohio State University and local apple growers. Consumer perception and apple traits were evaluated through two sets of sensory experiments: consumer hedonic testing and descriptive analysis. Consumer testing was conducted in private sensory booths, where apple slices were provided in a randomized, blinded order to mitigate order effects. One hundred participants rated apples on their appearance, texture, flavor, and overall liking on a 9-pt hedonic liking scale (i.e., dislike extremely to like extremely). Descriptive analysis was conducted by 12 trained panelists who used references as anchors on a 10-pt scale to score important appearance, aroma, flavor, and texture fruit characteristics. Measured characteristics were decided in collaboration with the panel organizer, trained panelists, and included traits of particular interest to growers. The trained panelists rated 26 traits like red color, floral notes, sweetness, and crispness. Anchors were carefully selected to provide precise references along the scale, such as sucrose solutions of varying concentration to calibrate judgements of sweetness. To compare how different factors of the apple related to each other, correlation analyses were run on the datasets. Flavor liking had the strongest positive correlation with overall liking, followed by texture liking, while appearance liking showed a weaker positive correlation. Sweetness exhibited a slight positive correlation with overall liking, whereas sourness showed the opposite. Using mean separation tests, we identified 15 apple selections liked equivalently to Honeycrisp, a top commercial apple. Further phytochemical analysis will enable gaining insights on nutritional quality profile and its relation to consumer preference. Our goal is to provide information on novel apples that will enable apple growers to diversify their offerings, which will also benefit producers and consumers.
