TAThe levels of SS were stable over the 8 d storage period whichis reflected by no significant effect of storage treatment in the totalsugar levels. However, there was a significant statistical effect ofcolour at harvest (P < 0.001) and of interaction between storage andcolour at harvest (P < 0.001) for the values of SS. While the SS forcolour one and three increased with storage, SS for colour two, four,and five was reduced. However, all changes in SS as measured withthe refractometer were less than 7% and, although significant, thesechanges were rather minor (Table 3).
TA expressed as citric acid equivalents, varied with fruit colour atharvest. This same trend was maintained in berries during storage,and storage itself further reduced the amount of TA (Table 3). Thus,both main factors (colour at harvest and storage time) were highlysignificant (P < 0.001), while there was no significant interactionbetween them.Due to the reduction of acidity with increasing colour at har-vest and extended storage, and small parallel changes in SS, thesugar:acid ratio increased steadily with both colour at harvest andlength of storage (Table 3). To test whether the sensory panel recog-nized this change in sugar:acid ratio, we calculated the sugar:acidratio from the scores for sweetness and acidity that were given inthe sensory evaluation. This calculation demonstrated that also thesensory panel judged the sugar:acid ratio to increase with colour atharvest (Table 2). However, while the chemical analysis revealed aslight but significantly higher sugar:acid ratio in berries stored for8 d compared to berries stored for 1 d (Table 3), the results of thesensory panel indicated the opposite (Table 2). Apparently, the sen-sation of sweetness and acidity was influenced by other parametersthan measurable sugar and acid concentrations