Fruit quality of seven nectarine cultivars produced in Turkey

Although nectarine is produced in many countries for quite a long time, it became widespread only lately in Turkey. Demand for nectarine fruits is gradually increasing in both domestic and foreign markets, therefore, new cultivars are found in the markets. The aim of this research is to determine the physical, chemical and biochemical characteristics of different nectarine cultivars such as ‘Beauty’, ‘May’, ‘Fresh Queen’, ‘Red’, ‘Sunny’, ‘Shine’ and ‘Globe’, that are commonly grown in the Aegean region. The average fruit weight, width and length of ‘Globe’ nectarine were the highest with 187.9 g, 70.1 mm and 67.5 mm, respectively; while the lowest values were found as 101.7 g, 55.6 mm and 58.5 mm, respectively in ‘Piun’. Fruit skin colors showed significant differences, and the color values of C* and h° ranged between 24.18 and 47.77 and 24.47-33.67, respectively, according to the cultivars. In this research, ‘Globe’ had the highest fruit flesh firmness with 58.2 N, followed by ‘Sunny’ (53.0 N) and ‘Shine’ (51.0 N), while the others varied between 40.0 and 45.0 N. Additionally, the soluble solids content was the highest in ‘Shine’ with 16.4% and the lowest in ‘May’ (10.7%). Significant differences were observed in total phenol content and antioxidant activity of analyzed nectarine cultivars. The results obtained from the study showed that the physicochemical properties of nectarine cultivars display significant differences.