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Horticulture another five years, is not sufficient to expose a potential selection to a range of climatic conditions. New varieties can also fail because of a lack of consumer acceptance. In an effort to increase fruit consumption in the Euro- pean Union, a research project called ISAFruit conducted one of the largest consumer fruit taste tests in the world to learn about consumer fruit preferences and consumer segmentation. ISAFruit, a five-year, 13.8 million euro project com- pleted in 2010, involved 200 researchers from 60 research programs and 16 EU countries. As part of the project, 5,000 consumers from 17 cities and 7 countries tasted 11 new and standard apple varieties. The standard varieties were Golden Delicious, Jonagold, and Fuji. Newer varieties included Pink Lady, Kanzi, Junami, Rubens, Dolce, Ariane, Ligol, and a few others. The ISAFruit researchers mapped sweetness, acidity, sourness, and firmness on a four-square grid. Points north of the horizontal line indicated sweet prefer- ences, south were sour. East of the vertical line were acidic preferences, west were sour and firmness. "One thing we noticed was that there was no single variety located at the core of consumer acceptance (where the squares intercept). A lot of the varieties we tested failed in consumer acceptance," Bonany said. "That means there is still room for variety improvement. If we're able to put a variety in the core acceptance area, we can better ensure that a majority of con- sumers will accept it." Confusion Several of the new varieties in the test were bicolored, which confused con- sumers. "The bicoloreds all look the same, but they taste very different. This creates confusion with consumers," he said, adding that the similar appearance of var- ious red peach varieties has resulted in declining consumption in Europe. Con- sumers can't tell if they are white flesh or high acid by looking at them. Consumers familiar with tart, green apples like Granny Smith and red, sweet ones would likely be confused if the industry released a very sweet, green apple or a very tart, red one, he mused. Consumer preferences Consumer preferences were divided into three groups: Group A (68 percent of those tested) prefers sweet varieties, higher than 15° Brix with acidity lower than 6 grams per liter; Group B (26 per- cent) prefers acidic, crisp apples, acidity greater than 7 gram per liter. Group C (6 percent) didn't like sweet varieties but specifically liked Fuji and Rubens. Bonany believes that apple marketers www.DelegateInsecticide.com 800-258-3033 ®Trademark of Dow AgroSciences LLC ©2010 Dow AgroSciences LLC. Always read and follow label directions. M38-359-001 (11/10) BR 010-42145 DAAGDELE0054 may be sending varieties to the wrong segments of people. In northern Europe, consumers preferred more acidic vari- eties, while those in southern Europe favored sweet ones. Polish consumers showed the highest preference for sweet apples. Northern Germany had the great- est number of consumers that preferred acidic varieties. "Consumer segmentation didn't corre- spond with age and gender," he said, an interesting factor that could be important in marketing campaigns. Most promo- tions focus on age or gender, but such focus might not be effective in reaching the target market. • www.goodfruit.com GOOD FRUIT GROWER JANUARY 15, 2012 21