Relationships between Fruit Acceptability and Health-Case of Seven Pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) Juices

Copyright © 2013 Chiraz El Kar et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The objective of this study was to evaluate acceptability and instrumental measurements (titratable acidity, total soluble sugar, total phenolic, flavonoids, anthocyanins, and condensed tannin contents as well as antioxidant capacity) of seven Tunisian pomegranate cultivars to relate fruit acceptability and beneficial health. Seventy one participants were asked to complete a questionnaire and to indicate their level of acceptance, on a nine point-hedonic scale, for fruit size, sweet-ness, bitterness, juice color and juice overall acceptability. Taste and aril color were the main criteria to select Pome-granate. Significant differences occurred for all the acceptability tests. Titratable acidity determines the taste and im-portant inter-specific variability in the phenolic contents as well as for the antioxidant capacities was noticed. Antho-cyanin and condensed tannin were contributing to the organoleptic properties while bitterness acceptability was nega-tively correlated to the antioxidant capacity. Also, a relationship was found between the fruit size acceptability and the antioxidant capacity