BIOCHEMICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF CHINESE DATE FRUITS AT DIFFERENT MATURITY STAGES

Abstract

The climate changes from the recent decades, and the decline of stone fruit plantations (peaches and apricot) in the sandy soil area, have led the fruit researchers from Research Development Station for Plant Culture on Sands Dăbuleni to look for another line of fruit species, namely exotic fruit species. One of these species is the Chinese date, which in the seven years of study in the experimental lot at Dăbuleni, fruiting from the second year after planting and managed to become known as a fruit produced on the sands of Dăbuleni, or named ”the Dăbuleni jujube”. Although the research station only owns 1.5 ha demonstration plot, it has managed to sell jujube fruits to consumers across the country through online commerce. The fruits were sold in various stages of ripening, panda and completely brown fruits. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to present the nutritional values of Chinese date fruits at different maturation stages for six genotypes. At the end of the study, the vitamin C content in the fruit showed the highest values recorded in the Xuan Cheng Jiang genotype (305.41 mg/fresh fruit) in the fully brown stage, and in the „panda stage” the Lang genotype recorded the highest vitamin C content (283.51 mg/100g fresh fruit).