QUALITATIVE COMPARISON BETWEEN COMMERCIAL "TRADITIONAL" AND "ORGANIC" TOMATO PRODUCTS USING MULTIVARIATE STATISTICAL ANALYSIS

Each brand was submitted to a very wide list of chemical (including pesticides), physical and sensory analyses in order to acquire a better knowledge of the substances originating from decomposition phenomena (sugar degradation, formation of volatile aromatic substances, etc) and to evaluate the quality of the final product quality.

In order to ensure the widest possible variance, multivariate statistical analyses was used; it allows a model to be obtained which could describe the different contributions of the analytical variables to the sensory attributes examined.

Moreover, a definition of quality by applying a proposed QDA (Quantitative Descriptive Analysis) method has proved particularly useful in selecting the most important qualitative parameters and in defining the differences between the various products examined.