2.3. Evaluation of fruit ripening
To determine the extent of fruit ripening, fifteen fruit were selected per replicate and fruit color was rated on a scale from 1 to 7 as by Zhu et al. (2010), where, 1 = entirely green, 2 = break green, 3 = more green than yellow, 4 = more yellow than green, 5 = yellow with green tips, 6 = entirely yellow, and 7 = entirely yellow with brown freckles. The ripening index (RI) was defined and calculated as: RI =P (number of fruit in given scale _ scale value)/total number of fruit evaluated.