Categories: News
Date: Nov 19, 2009
Title: Science identifies the perfect English strawberry
New research by a team of experts from two universities, two commercial laboratories and a perfumer has concluded that “few strawberry varieties taste like a strawberry should” and that one variety is head and shoulders above the others.
The research, on behalf of Hargreaves Plants, a company who produce most of the strawberry plants for UK farmers, was co-ordinated by Dr Hazel MacTavish-West, a plant scientist and expert in the flavour and health benefits of fruit and vegetables.
The aim was to compare the flavour and colour of seven British grown strawberry varieties using human sensory assessment of sweetness, acidity and overall flavour intensity with the results from laboratory studies which quantify the amount of flavour compounds or pigments present.
Dr MacTavish-West said “There was a huge variation in the amount of juice in different varieties; some tasted very tangy acidic and others were quite sweet. There were only a few varieties which actually tasted like a strawberry should”.
The new research showed one strawberry variety came out head and shoulders above the others: cultivar Albion, grown by a number of farmers in the UK had an even balance of sweetness and acidity with a well rounded, intense strawberry flavour. When experts blended up the strawberries into a smoothie (to mimic what happens when eaten and to measure the flavour profile produced) Albion had twice the amount of flavour compounds compared with its nearest rival.
Research has discovered over 50 different components of strawberry fruit flavour.
“Humans react to flavour and smell in a very deep, instinctive way. Our sense of taste and smell is deeply linked to the limbic system in our brains, which is responsible for emotions and feelings”, says Dr MacTavish-West. “This means that eating a strawberry which tastes like one we ate as a child, or another good time (like when our favourite tennis player actually won Wimbledon) has the ability to momentarily take you back there in your mind. Good strawberry flavour is as important as sweetness or acidity when it comes to enjoying strawberries.”
Rupert Hargreaves, of Hargreaves Plants in Lincolnshire said “This is good news for both farmers and consumers. Albion is easy to grow, has great disease resistance and cheap to harvest. The public love Albion because it is London bus red and extremely sweet”. British strawberries, especially cv Albion, are available from May to November in all good supermarkets.
Pictures 1 & 2: Assessing strawberry flavour. The strawberries are enclosed in a blender which has been adapted to draw nitrogen gas across the fruit and into a gas chomatograph which analyses the flavour compounds present. When the fruit is blended up, a large burst of flavour is generated and analysed.
Picture 3: In the third picture scientists were using a technique which passively absorbs all the flavour compounds in the air onto a fibre, trapping them for more detailed chemical analysis.
