Consumer acceptance and primary drivers of liking for small fruits

Small fruit grow naturally in northern Italy, but also in the Sicilian region(southern Italy) there are some areas with the essential climatic conditions for thedevelopment of this crop. Nevertheless, according to official statistics, the quantitiesof fresh small fruits placed on the Italian market are lower than in other Europeancountries. The objective of this study was to assess consumer acceptance for sensoryattributes and other intrinsic and extrinsic quality parameters of fresh small fruit, inorder to know the primary drivers of liking and have a first understanding of reasonsfor the poor domestic consumption. Six focus groups with sensory test were carriedout to assess consumers’ preferences on four types of small fruits stored for 3 and 5days at low temperature (5±1°C, 90±3% relative humidity RH). Consumers’evaluations were also compared with those of a panel of experts for the two periods ofstorage. Consumers’ acceptance of sensory attributes after 3 days of storage was verygood and after 5 days was good. Visual appearance and taste were the descriptorswith highest liking both for consumers and experts. Results showed a goodconcordance between FG consumers’ evaluations and panellists’ ones, for alldescriptors of berries. These results may be useful for future research to focus oneffective actions in order to enhance berries commercialization.