Location: Vegetable Crops Research
Project Number: 5090-21220-007-041-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Aug 22, 2025
End Date: Aug 21, 2026
Objective:
• Define key quality attributes of cranberry fruits in measurable terms with a focus on firmness.
• Establish instrumental techniques to quantify cranberry fruit quality.
• Collect data on cranberry fruit quality and composition to enable to seek correlations between cranberry fruit quality/composition and genetic characteristics of different varieties.
• Seek correlations between the quality and composition of cranberry fruits and those of sweetened dried cranberry products.
Approach:
The goal of the proposed research is to elucidate how cranberry fruit quality and composition are related to the quality and composition of sweetened dried cranberry, which is a high priority for the U.S. cranberry industry. In a national breeding trait priorities survey, certain fruit quality traits such as size, shape, color, and firmness have been identified as the most useful traits to produce Sweetened dried cranberry (SDC). Therefore, target fruit characteristics will include firmness, size, shape, internal and external structure, color, anthocyanin, calcium, and water-soluble, chelate-soluble, and alkali-soluble pectins. A set of cultivars that vary in fruit characteristics will be selected and processed in a food-grade laboratory using standard procedures to produce SDCs. The yield will be evaluated as the total weight of a product relative to that of the corresponding fresh fruits prior to processing. SDC products will be evaluated for size, shape, color, acidity, texture, and sensory properties . Liquid chromatography–mass spectroscopy (LC–MS) will be used to assess the impact of processing on health beneficial phytochemicals such as anthocyanins and proanthocyanidins.