SENSORY EVALUATION OF PINEAPPLE CULTIVARS FOR CONSUMPTION IN NATURA

The pineapple orchards in Brazil often presents losses of plants and fruits caused by fusariosis, because the current cultivars are susceptive to that disease. New resistant cultivars have been available. However, there are no records about their sensory evaluations by consumers. The objective of this work was to evaluate the sensory acceptability of two new cultivars resistant to Fusarium, Vitoria and EC-93, by comparing them with other ones already established in the fresh fruits market, Perola and Gold. The fruits were evaluated by 52 consumers using 9-points hedonic scale for aroma, flavor, texture, global impression, appearance of the slice, appearance of the fruit, using the right scale for ideal acidity and sweetness and using 5-points scale for purchase intention. It was also evaluated SS, ATTN and SS/AT. The cultivar Gold had the highest means of acceptance for most of the parameters evaluated, whereas the cv CS-93, the lowest. Except for the attribute appearance of slice, the Vitoria cultivar did not differ from the most accepted cultivars in the evaluated parameters. The fruits differed significantly in the TSS, between 12.0 and 16.0 Brix, TA between 0.52 and 0.81% citric acid and ratio between 19.12 and 28.46. Among the cultivars resistant to Fusarium, the results suggest a low potential market for the EC-93 and a higher one for Vitoria.