BACKGROUND It has recently become increasingly evident that banana projects in Uganda need to consider consumer preferences as part of the breeding process to increase the acceptability of new cultivars. A trained panel used quantitative descriptive analysis (QDA) as a tool to assess the sensory characteristics of 32 cooking bananas (matooke). The aim was to investigate which sensory characteristics best describe matooke. RESULTS Fourteen descriptors were generated. The preferred attributes of matooke were high-intensity yellow color, homogeneous distribution of yellow color, good matooke aroma, highly moldable by touch, moist and smooth in the mouth. Analysis of variance revealed significant differences in the yellowness, homogeneity of color, firmness, moistness, smoothness, matooke aroma, hardness, and moldability across the genotypes (P < 0.05). Principal component analysis (PCA) showed strong positive correlations between yellowness and homogeneity of the color (R = 0.92). Smoothness in the mouth and moldability by touch were strongly and positively correlated (R = 0.88). Firmness in the mouth was well predicted by hardness to touch (R2 = 0.85). The matooke samples were ranked into two sensory clusters by agglomerative hierarchical clustering (AHC). CONCLUSION The study showed attribute terms that could be used to describe matooke and also revealed that QDA may be used as a tool during the assessment and selection of new cooking banana hybrids to identify relevant sensory attributes because of its ability to discriminate among the banana hybrids.

The authors are grateful to the staff of the National Agricultural Research Laboratories for participating in the study, Mr Ngabirano Wilber and Ms Jennifer Lalam Acam for delivering matooke bunches to the laboratories, and the grant opportunity INV-008567 (formerly OPP1178942): Breeding RTB Products for End User Preferences (RTBfoods), to the French Agricultural Research Centre for International Development (CIRAD), Montpellier, France, by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF): https://rtb ...

https://doi.org/10.1002/jsfa.12606

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Brigitte Uwimanahttps://orcid.org/0000-0001-7460-9001

https://doi.org/10.1002/jsfa.12606

Biotech and Plant Breeding

Agronomy; Banana; Food Security; Plant Breeding; Plant Production; Plantain; Value Chains

Sensory; Bananas; Hybrids; Breeding; Food Security; Uganda

Africa; East Africa

Uganda

Eastern Africa Hub

Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture