Five tomatoes per measurement day were used for NMR experiments.
The core (defined as the tomato center), placenta, outer
pericarp and locular tissues were studied in Experiment 1 and the
core, placenta and outer pericarp were studied in Experiment 2. A
1 cm thick slice was cut in the equatorial region perpendicular to
the pedicle axis, and cylinders (8mmin diameter)were cut into the
specific tissues. Sampleswere wiped to removewater fromthe broken
cells and then put into 8mm-diameterNMRtubes closed with a
cap. Measurementswere performed at 18 ◦C, once the temperature
had been stabilized within the sample. While performing measurements
on a sample, the other tubeswere kept in a thermo-regulated
chamber at 18◦C and analysed successively.
The NMR T1 and T2 relaxation curves were fitted on Scilab
software with two different methods: the maximum entropy
method (MEM) (Mariette et al., 1996), which provides a continuous