NUTRITIONAL AND QUALITY COMPARISON BETWEEN ORGANIC AND CONVENTIONAL FRESH AND PROCESSING TOMATO: RESULTS OF A TWO-YEAR PROJECT
Fruits and vegetables contain vitamins, minerals, and fiber and are an important source of bioactive compounds in the diet.
In particular tomato, that comprises a significant part of the human diet, is known to be an important source of antioxidant compounds, such as lycopene, flavonoids and ascorbic acid.
Numerous recent studies concerned the comparison between organic and conventional fresh tomato and its by-products, in order to demonstrate the positive effect of organic agricultural practices on antioxidants content.
However, results about organic farming are not always consistent because of the lack of technical data and the differences between the two agricultural practices (soil, climate, etc.). The present work describes the results obtained from a 24-month research project called BioPomNutri (www.biopomnutri.it), in which organic and conventional tomatoes and relative processed tomato products, were compared with respect to their nutritional and qualitative characteristics.
Two commercial cultivars (Docet Monsanto and Faraday ISI Sementi an elongated and a round prismatic type, respectively) were considered for this study; in particular fresh tomatoes, tomato puree and whole peeled tomatoes obtained from these cultivars were analyzed for °Brix, pH, Hunter color, Bostwick consistency, total acidity, total sugars and total solids, carotenoids, polyphenols and ascorbic acid contents.
Data obtained from the experimentation pointed out a positive trend in regard with bioactive compounds in organic tomato, mainly in 2011; data partly confirmed in 2012 study.
Moreover the statistical analysis (PCA) of qualitative and nutritional data permitted to distinguish fresh and processed tomatoes got from the two different agricultural practices.
Sandei, L., Stingone, C., Morini, E., Zaccardelli, M., Adamo, P., Agrelli, D. and Rao, M. (2015). NUTRITIONAL AND QUALITY COMPARISON BETWEEN ORGANIC AND CONVENTIONAL FRESH AND PROCESSING TOMATO: RESULTS OF A TWO-YEAR PROJECT. Acta Hortic. 1081, 331-338
DOI: 10.17660/ActaHortic.2015.1081.43
https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2015.1081.43
DOI: 10.17660/ActaHortic.2015.1081.43
https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2015.1081.43
organic agriculture, tomato processing, polyphenols, lycopene, vitamin C
English
1081_43
331-338