Quality of tomatoes under different transportation conditions by principal component analysis

ABSTRACT Bulk transportation of tomatoes is a step with high occurrence of mechanical impacts, leading to increased losses and reduction in the quality of fruits arriving at the industry and reaching the consumer market. The present study aimed to evaluate variations in physical-chemical parameters associated with the quality of tomato fruits, occurred during bulk transportation, using an approach based on principal component analysis. The experiment was conducted in the municipality of Morrinhos - Goiás, Brazil. Firmness, titratable acidity, total soluble solids, pH and mass loss were evaluated in the fruits at three times: during transportation on dirt road; after transportation on dirt road and during transportation on asphalt-paved road; after transportation on dirt and asphalt-paved roads and arrival at the processing yard. Principal component analysis was used to identify which physical-chemical attributes were most affected by transportation and generate quality indices of tomato fruits according to the physical-chemical attributes. Variation in the attributes was explained by the first three principal components, which had cumulative explained variance of 78.37%. Titratable acidity, soluble solids and mass loss had the highest correlations with the most representative principal component, thus being the most affected attributes during the bulk transportation of the fruits.