The use of a combination of instrumental methods to assess change in sensory crispness during storage of a "Honeycrisp" apple breeding family.

This work compared the abilities of instrumental tests to predict sensory crispness maintenance of apple fruit. The use of an instrumental method that is highly correlated to sensory crispness evaluation can enhance the efficiency and reduce the cost of measuring crispness for breeding purposes. This study showed that sensory crispness and change in crispness after storage of an apple breeding family were reliably predicted with a combination of instrumental measurements and multiple variable analyses. The strategy potentially can be applied to other apple varieties for more accurate interpretation of crispness maintenance measured instrumentally.