The effect of five rootstocks on physical, mechanical and chemical characteristics of Yashar fruits -a new mandarin- during ripening stages

According to a breeding program carry out in Citrus and Subtropical Fruits Research Center of Iran, Yashar mandarin was created from crossing between Minneola tangelo and Changsha mandarins. Based on previous investigations, we found that Yashar might be a late ripening variety on Sour orange. The quality of this new variety on different commercial rootstocks did not study yet, completely. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the Yashar physico-chemical and mechanical characteristics on five commercial rootstocks during two years.
In this study, the effect of five rootstock (Sour orange, Poncirus, Citrumelo, Citrange and Flaying dragon) on Yashar fruit quality investigated for two years during ripening. Yashar fruit was sampled at last January to early of March period every two weeks (4 times). Various physico-chemical and mechanical characteristics evaluated including fruit lenght, width, thickness; arithmetic, geometric, equivalent and harmonic means; fruit aspect ratio, sphericity, surface area, true volume, apparent volume, volume error, density, peel and pulp firmness, peel thickness, weight, juice percentage, seed number, peel color indices (L*, a*, b*, hue angle, chroma and CCI), total soluble solid (TSS), titratable acidity (TA), technological index (TI), pH, electrical conductivity (EC), total phenol, ascorbic acid and antioxidant capacity during experiment.
The results showed that fruit length, width and thickness of Yashar had not significantly differences on five rootstock. Although fruit density showed an increasing trend during the harvest time but Yashar fruit density on Sour orange was lower than other rootstocks. Arithmetic and geometric means of fruits on all rootstocks were closer to equivalent mean as a really diameter. Variables such aspect ratio, sphericity (1.16), surface area, true volume and apparent volume were higher on Flying dragon than other rootstocks (p