Preliminary study of ETNA packaged prickly pears by sensory evaluation

The fruit of opuntia is edible, although it has to be peeled carefully to remove the small spines on the outer skin before consumption, in fact the scarce diffusion of its market is principally own to the difficult of peeling. So, the possibility of finding a new market segment for the Sicilian prickly pear, has suggested to study the shelf-life of Etna prickly pears by evaluation of sensory profile varying films, conditions of package and technological treatment. On the basis of microbiological analyses, sensory evaluation was not possible for all the samples beside the 5th day. In fact, up to 8th day the samples A, B, C, D, G, while up to 10th day only A, B, C, G have been evaluated. From the gotten results, for the storage of prickly pear like fresh-to-cut fruits it is advisable to use film at low permeability and a packaging to contained lower part of O2.