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BACKGROUND Today, many agricultural products claiming a link to their origin and typicity receive a warm welcome on the market. Nevertheless, the notion of typicity is blurred for consumers and needs to be objectified for communication purposes. This study aims at formalizing a methodology for studying typicity of terroirs, with PDO wines as an example, using a participatory approach with professionals of the wine sector from terroirs, using focus group and tasting. The vision of typicity of terroirs by professionals outside of these terroirs has been studied by a free word association task. RESULTS: This study allowed a clear distinguishing of the typicity of the studied terroirs. Professionals from terroirs identified the global conceptual typicity of their terroirs using various factors, mainly soil, geography and grape variety, whereas professionals outside terroirs expressed their visions of terroirs by reputation or sensory characteristics of wines. Tasting results showed a discrimination of wines based on their typicity and highlighted descriptors involved in sensory perceptual typicity for each studied terroir. CONCLUSIONS: Professionals from terroirs share a common vision of their typicity and identify more typicity factors than professionals outside terroirs. Sensory typicity has been highlighted for five of the six terroirs studied, according to the various descriptors. The study of two populations, from and outside terroirs, shows the gap between the typicities identified by professionals from terroirs and those perceived by professionals outside terroirs. © 2020 Society of Chemical Industry [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Difficulties encountered during oral processing may cause food avoidance and increase the risk of malnutrition in older adults. The present survey aimed at comparing oral comfort experienced during consumption of apples in elderly and younger people. To do this, 122 participants divided into a senior group (65–83 years) and a control group (35–64 years) rated three varieties of apples (Gala, Granny Smith, Honey Crunch) using a "food comfortability" questionnaire related to general comfort, bolus formation, pain, texture, and taste sensations, and were assessed for their oral conditions. Each score of the "food comfortability" questionnaire was then submitted to a global principal component analysis and an analysis of variance. Apple variety was a significant factor for all items of the questionnaire. Age significantly affected dental pain, crunchiness, and melting sensation, with increased scores for pain and melting perception, and decreased scores for crunchiness when aging. Global comfort experienced while eating apple was also impacted by dental status and resting saliva flow rate. Bolus moistening was related to stimulated saliva flow rate, and its fragmentation was dependant on denture use. Painful sensations depended on self‐reported oral quality of life and sweet taste perception was influenced by the presence of oral mucosal disease. Apple variety is a good predictor of oral comfort experienced while eating. Altough age has a little effect on pain and texture perception, oral conditions such as missing teeth or denture use also contribute to oral comfort when consuming apples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background The evolution of the sensory and instrumental properties of grape seeds was investigated during berry development, with a focus on the effects of the harvest season and growing location. Results The sensory and instrumental texture analyses gave a consistent description of the ripening process. Moreover, the effect of maturation on the seed sensory descriptors was clearly influenced by the harvest season, and astringency was the most appropriate sensory attribute for the assessment of grape seed ripening. Except for seed cracking, which was positively correlated with fracturability ( R = 0.69) and toughness ( R = 0.68) in 2006, the compression parameters were generally not correlated with the sensory textural attributes but were more likely correlated with other sensory attributes such as astringency and vegetal aroma. The compression indices showed a logarithmic behaviour pattern during grape development, and seed stiffness was shown to be the most valuable textural index for parcel discrimination and identification of the optimal grape harvesting date. Conclusion This research showed that both seed sensory attributes and instrumental texture properties are indicators of grape ripening. However, these properties could be affected by the harvest season and growing location. As no clear correlation was found between the seed sensory attributes and instrumental texture parameters, a revision of the sensory method available in the literature could be suggested. © 2013 Society of Chemical Industry [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Texture profile analysis (TPA) is widely used to assess the textural properties of fruit. However, test parameters may potentially affect TPA results. This work studies the influence of the degree of deformation and crosshead speed on the mechanical parameters of apple measured by TPA. In this study, the degree of deformation ranged from 5% to 17.8% and the crosshead speed from 10 to 90 mm min. Eight parameters were extracted from the analysis of force-displacement and force-time curves. For each parameter, the mean value and the coefficient of variation (CV) were examined. A central composite design that simultaneously takes into account both input variables, the degree of deformation and crosshead speed, was implemented. It appears that the linear and the quadratic effects of the degree of deformation make it the major variable. However, neglecting the effects (linear and quadratic) of the crosshead speed might be disastrous since they significantly affect parameters such as cohesiveness, gumminess and work 2. Moreover, the CV of hardness 1 depends mainly on the interaction between the degree of deformation and crosshead speed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]