In most cases the IEC of ORG fruit was lower than CON and/or INT fruit in the storage treatments (Table 5), which was associated with the higher flesh firmness of ORG apples
(Table 6, Fig. 1A). The lower IEC for ORG apples may result from lower N concentrations in ORG fruit (Table 4) (Fallahi et al., 2001), but the relationship between flesh firmness and ethylene concentrations has not been fully explained (Johnston et al., 2002). Percent moisture decreased during storage in apples from all farm management systems in 2003, but few differences were seen among systems, and none that would explain the firmness differences (Peck, 2004).