Overall, the mean total provitamin A carotenoids ranged from 559 to 4680 mg/100 g fw) at ripening stage 1 and from 1680 to 10,630 mg/100 g fw) at ripening stage 5 (Table 2). The variation in total provitamin A carotenoids in the 9 cultivars that were tested confirms findings by Englberger et al. (2003) that there is a wide variation in fruit provitamin A carotenoids and carotenoids contents, both within and across genomic groups. Apart from the main role in nutrition, this indicates a strong genetic basis for establishing breeding programs for provitamin A carotenoids content, depending on fruit physicochemical properties and agronomic production characteristics (yield, disease resistance, etc.) of the cultivar.