30 BULLETIN 859, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



Against the arguments in favor of picking and shipping turning 

 fruit one must consider the advantages of present practices. The 

 picking of turning fruit would require that the fields be gone over 

 more frequently than at present and that the pickers exercise much 

 more judgment and care. The writer had planned to make com- 

 mercial shipments of tomatoes picked at the turning stage in order 

 to get dependable information which might serve as a basis for rec- 

 ommending to the growers changes in the current practice, but the 

 discontinuance of this work for the present has prevented the carrying 

 out of the plan. It is of very great importance to the growers that 

 these shipments be made. It is felt that the work reported upon in 

 this bulletin supports the chemical explanation offered of the infe- 

 riority of tomatoes sliipped from the east coast of Florida during the 

 winter and spring months. It remains to be determined whether 

 the changes in current practice suggested in these pages can be put 

 into effect. If they can be, the result of these investigations will 

 be to insure the consumer a better product in the future than in the 



past. 



SUMMARY AND CONCLUSIONS. 



With the particular object of discovering the chemical basis for 

 the inferiority of commercially picked and ripened Florida tomatoes 

 marketed in the North during the winter and spring, a series of anal- 

 yses has been made of tomatoes of several degrees of maturity and 

 of tomatoes ripened artificially under various conditions of venti- 

 lation. 



It was found that the only way to secure samples of comparable 

 maturity for analysis was to tag the blossoms and pick the fruit at a 

 definite age. There is a wide range of variation in the size of the 

 tomatoes within the same variety, but ripening proceeds at a uni- 

 form rate regardless of size. Maturity is dependent upon age, not 

 upon size. 



Using fruit of known age, therefore, analyses were made which 

 indicate that in general throughout the ripening period there is an 

 increase in moisture, acids, and sugars and a decrease in solids, total 

 nitrogen, starch, pentosans, crude fiber, and ash. 



The most striking change which occurs during ripening is that 

 undergone by carbohydrates. Sugars increase from 25.66 per cent 

 in fruit 14 days old to 43.32 per cent in ripe fruit. 



Starch decreases in the same interval from 15.84 to 2.65 per cent. 

 The most marked decrease takes place during the period of transition 

 from green to red. 



The percentage composition of fruit picked green but ripened with 

 free access of air compared with analyses of turning and vine-ripened 

 fruit did not show enough variation to account for the great differ- 



