Physico-chemical characterization of cherry tomatoes grown under organic agriculture

In Spain and especially in the province of Almería, where agriculture is a major livelihood, tomato crop (Solanum lycopersicum L.) has great importance in the economic field. In recent years, research in organic agriculture has given priority to issues such as increasing fruit production, resistance to pathogens and adverse temperatures, etc., achieving significant improvements in these points. However, now they are beginning to consider priority aspects as the organoleptic and nutritional quality. These values have been preserved in traditional cultivars, for this reason, the research takes a new approach to improving organoleptic and nutritional fruit. In this work, physico-chemical and nutritional quality of eight traditional cherry tomato landraces grown under protected organic conditions were analyzed in order to find cultivars with better characteristics. Statistically significant differences were obtained between the parameters studied for each of the varieties (yield, weight, size, color, firmness, titratable acidity, pH, total soluble solids, ascorbic acid, lycopene, total phenol content and antioxidant activity). It can be concluded that the cherry cultivars presented good taste characteristics, and a high content in some of the studied compounds, covering largely the nutritional recommendation. This study has allowed us to extend the limited supply of quality products and identify cultivars that can serve as a source of genes for the development of new tomato cultivars with higher organoleptic and nutritional qualities. According the results obtained in this work the Ch8 landrace was considered the best in basis to traits such as yield, fruit weight, firmness, compounds responsible to the flavor, lycopene content and ascorbic acid contents.