3.2. Determination of the ripening stages of tomato cv.“Micro-Tom” fruitsWhen sampling tomato cv. “Micro-Tom” fruits at a specificripening stage according to days after anthesis, after mature greenor breaker stage, huge heterogeneity was observed. Therefore,visual appreciation of fruit ripening stages while ripening on thevine, off the vine and after the postharvest chilling storage wasevaluated.Fruits, which were ripened on the vine, off the vine and off thevine after storage during four weeks at 4◦C were initially classifiedby visual evaluation performed according to four color categories:green, yellow, orange and red. Green fruit was harvested when fruitstopped growing and had a whitish coloration at the blossom end(Ré et al., 2012). There were definite color changes in the fruitsduring ripening, and there were no fruits showing combination of