RELATIONSHIPS OF HISTOLOGICAL STRUCTURE TO TEXTURE OF FRESH AND PROCESSED FRUITS AND VEGETABLES

This review concerns both the botanical and the practical aspects of commonly recognized texture qualities of fruits and vegetables. Interrelationships between tissue structure and composition provide a wide variety of textural qualities in fresh and processed fruits and vegetables. Structural sources of textural appearance are described for several fruits and vegetables. Various examples of specialized supporting and fibrous tissues are also described with reference to problems of texture quality in frozen and dehydrated products. The roles of plant cell wall composition and of cellular contents, such as starch, are discussed with specific examples of manipulative control of texture in several processed products.