Measurement of Enzymatic Browning at Cut Surfaces and in Juice of Raw Apple and Pear Fruits

Abstract

ABSTRACT Reflectance procedures were developed to measure the extent of enzymatic browning at cut surfaces and in the raw juice of apple and pear fruits. Reflectance L and a measurements, made at transversely cut surfaces of plugs bored from fruit halves, were linear or bilinear with log time and related to the extent of browning in six apple cultivars. With apple and pear juices, tristimulus values changed linearly with time in samples undergoing browning. Differences between initial and final tristimulus values were better indices of browning than the slopes of time curves. The suitability of these procedures for evaluating the effectiveness of browning inhibitors was demonstrated with SO 2 and ascorbic acid treatments.