30 BULLETIN 859, TJ. 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 frea^uently 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 hi 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 shipped 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 4S.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- 
