Ten individual fruit were selected for the determination of peel color, which was measured around the equatorial region of the middle part of the fruit at three points using a Chromameter-
2 reflectance colorimeter (Minolta, Osaka, Japan) equipped with a CR-300 measuring head. Color was recorded using the CIE a*, b* and L* scale, where a* indicates green-red color, b* indicates blue-yellow color and L* indicates the light (scaled 1–100,
1 indicates the black and 100 indicates white). The instrument was calibrated with a standard white tile before measurements were taken. The values of a* and b* were converted into hue angle: h = tan 1 (b*/a*).
Fruit firmness was determined as described by Yan et al. (2011). Fruit firmness (N) was expressed as the mean of three measure- ments.