Sweet Cherry Research

Sweet Cherry Research. I'm Greg Martin with today's Fruit Grower Report. A cherry is a cherry is a cherry. Or so I thought until I talked with Carolyn Ross, Assistant Professor, Food Science & Human Nutrition with WSU. ROSS: I'm working as a part of the larger specialty crop research grant and we're responsible for the sensory evaluation part of the work. The portion of my work was to determine consumer acceptance of stemmed cherries versus stem free cherries. So what do people think of them? Will they still accept the cherry if it doesn't have a stem on it. I have never really given this much thought since all the cherries you buy in the store have stems...but to be honest when I fix a bowl of cherries as a snack the first thing I do is pull all the stems off. ROSS: We had a hundred panelists/consumers come in and we gave them two different samples. We gave them a sample of cherries with the stem and then a sample of cherries without the stem and then we asked them a series of questions. So they tasted the cherries and then they answered questions about the overall acceptance of flavor and taste. This may sound like a slightly futile exercise but it is important to know since new harvesting techniques and varieties may wind up without stems. ROSS: And then before they did that they evaluated the appearance of the cherries. How much they liked the overall appearance, the color, the size and the shape. And they did that using a seven point scale which ranged from like extremely to dislike extremely. Tomorrow we will talk about the results with Carolyn Ross. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.