Sometimes a Little Mango Goes a Long Way: a Rapid Approach to Assess How Different Shipping Systems Affect Fruit Commercial Quality

Mangoes are climacteric and highly perishable fruits and represent the most appreciated tropical fruits in the world for their special taste and aroma. Depending on the structure of the supply chain and on general environmental and technical factors, fruit picking may be anticipated or postponed within the frame time of fruit maturation stage. Hence, mangoes may be collected for long distance sea freight at the unripe green stage, while pre-ripened fruits, usually transported by air to shorten storage time, are harvested later and must be eaten within few days. In the present study, we assess the potential of an evaluation technique that combines conventional ripening measures with the new detection system of volatile compounds using the PTR-ToF-MS to obtain information on the fruit “eating” quality state. Fruits from the same mango cultivar and shipped from the same country with two alternative shipping systems were compared by analysing the evolution of their physicochemical characteristics and volatile organic compound (VOCs) profiles in time. By pooling the entire dataset together, it emerges that VOCs and physicochemical parameters can be used to separate the two types of transport and the two different ripening stages for the air-freighted fruits, while the sea-freighted fruits showed a rather static behaviour between the two sampling time. The two combined methods may provide a simple and fast tool to assess the presence of characters strongly attractive to mango consumers and in a broader context can be helpful in giving a better idea about the eating qualities of the commercialized products.