The lossof RG-I galactan side chains occurs in most fruit species (Redgwellet al., 1997b), although some studies report the loss of arabinansas playing a more important role in apple softening, particularly inmealiness (Tong et al., 1999; Nobile et al., 2011) and oversoftening(Pe˜na and Carpita, 2004). Pe˜na and Carpita (2004) found that theselective loss of highly branched arabinans from RG-I preceded theloss of firmness in the four apple cultivars analysed.