2.3. Sensory evaluation
The sensory attributes that characterized mushroom deterioration
were determined as described by Ares, Parentelli, Gámbaro, Lareo, and
Lema (2006) with some modifications. These attributes were: offodor,
stipe color, stipe elongation and cap opening level. Samples
were evaluated by a sensory panel of ten trained assessors. The mushrooms
were served in closed, odorless plastic containers at room temperature.
After opening packaging bags, the mushrooms were placed
in plastic containers and evaluations were performed within 1 h in
order to avoid loss of off-odors. A balanced complete block design was
carried out for a duplicate evaluation of the samples. For scoring,
10 cm unstructured scales anchored with “nil” for zero and “high” for ten were used, except for the stipe color and cap opening level descriptors.
The anchors of color descriptor were “white” and “brown”. The cap
opening level was described by the percentage of open caps, whichwas
determined as follows: the known number of mushrooms with open
caps (%) = Noc/Nt × 100, where Nt = total number of mushrooms and
Noc= number of open-capped mushrooms