Classification of tomatoes as their firmness level
Forty fruits were separated into the five firmness classes by finger feel as A, B, C, D and E. Categorisation was tested using a triangle test method. For triangle evaluation, three coded tomatoes were offered to each of the 15 panellists who were asked to identify two tomatoes that were identical to each other according to their finger feel firmness. A minimum of nine of the 15 panellists decided that those two of three tomatoes were identical to each from such a finger feel test. This selection was carried out 10 times for each acceptability levels of tomatoes until 20 tomatoes were found that had the same finger feel firmness. According to Meilgaard, Civille, and Carr (1999) nine from 15 panellists concluding that two tomatoes were different gave a confidence level at the 5% level of significance. The panel members were also asked to give a score between 0 and 100 for the level of either acceptability or slicability in addition to the score for finger feel firmness and softness. On this subjective basis only A, B and C scoring tomatoes were considered acceptable for marketing. Those five different acceptability levels (by finger feel) are given in Table 1.