24 



EXPERIMENTS ON PROCESSING PERSIMMONS. 



carbon dioxid. At the end of four days all fruits had become non- 

 astringent. Nine specimens of Triumph were used, and of these 

 three softened during the four-day period in the carbon dioxid. 

 During the next two days 70 per cent softened. One specimen each 

 of the Tsuru and Zengi varieties softened while in process and during 

 the next two days storage at room temperature 70 per cent of the 

 Tsuru and 15 per cent of the Zengi became soft. None of these sof- 

 tened fruits developed the abnormality described on page 18, with 

 the exception of one specimen of Zengi. The experiment shows 

 that persimmons may be cold stored and then processed, but that 

 they may be expected to soften quickly after removal from the car- 

 bon dioxid. 



RELATION BETWEEN CHEMICAL COMPOSITION AND EASE OF PROCESSING. 



Experiment 16. As experience had shown that the different Jap- 

 anese varieties vary greatly in regard to the ease with which they 

 become nonastringent when placed in carbon dioxid, a study was 

 made of the chemical composition of the five varieties received on 

 November 9 to determine if ease of processing could be correlated 

 with the chemical composition. The analyses are given in the fol- 

 lowing table: 



Analyses of five varieties of Japanese persimmons used in the experiment. 



1 100-gram samples extracted with alcohol as in J. Amer. Chem. Soc., 1906, 28: 688. 

 2 By Proctor's modification of Lowenthal's method. U. S. Dept. Agr., Bureau of Chemistry Bui. 107, 

 Rev., p. 150. 



It was expected that the amounts of soluble tannin in the persim- 

 mons would vary roughly in the same way as the relative ease with 

 which the fruits processed. It was found, however, that while the 

 Tsuru variety, the most difficult to process of the five, contained 1.54 

 per cent of tannin, calculated as gallo-tannic acid, and the variety 

 Zengi, processing with great ease, contained 0.41 per cent, Hachiya, 

 with 0.88 per cent of tannin, was clearly more difficult to process than 

 Triumph, which contained 1.39 per cent of tannin, and Tane-nashi. 

 containing but 0.13 per cent of tannin, yielded less readily than Zengi. 



