GreenCHAINge Fruit & Vegetables: Work package 1: Formation of chocolate berries in white table grapes

In the GreenCHAINge project Wageningen UR Food & Biobased Research (FBR) cooperates with the industry in order to get a better performance in quality for fresh fruits and vegetables. For table-grapes, one of the problems limiting shelf life is the formation of brown grapes, so-called ‘chocolate berries’, in a punnet. The objective is to understand what is causing the formation of this browning.With this in mind, various classes of browning were identified and compared to the chocolate berry phenotype. Based on these findings, the hypothesis that mechanical damage causes the chocolate berry phenotype was tested using two types of mechanical stress: constant pressure and impact stress. While constant pressure showed no consequent increase in browning, the increased browning after impact stress indicates that impact stress may contribute to chocolate berry formation.