Good Morning Rasool. These question has special importance for fruits. The fisiology of most fruits, implies that during the ripening stage (3-4 months), the major phenomena that occours is a transformation of acids in sugars. For instance, for grape berries, in the beginning of July (Northern Hemisphery), the berries are very acid, and at the end of September, the berries become sweet. This occours because the organic acids of the grape berries (e.g. malic acid, tartaric acid and citric acid) are metabolised by the grape berry, and transformed into sugars (glucose+frutose), that accumulate in the cells of the pulp fruit. This phenomenom is called "ripening". Nevertheless, other phenomena occours in the berries, during these months, namely the increase of the concentration of phenolic compounds, e.g. (tannins, anthocyanins, procyanidins), the concentration of aroma compounds (poly-isoprene compounds), and the concentration and type of pectins. Thats why, we call "maturation" to these whole phenomena, and not strictly the transformation of acids into sugars, called ripening. In general, the grapegrower seeks the moment where the grape berry has an higher content of aroma compounds, phenolic compounds and anthocyanins, and not only a higher content of sugars.

Dear Paulo Dos Santos,

Thanks very much for your attention.

Best regards

Maturity is when the fruit is ready for harvest, not necessarily ripe. Example include tomato. Mostly harvested when mature not when ripen. At matured state, tomato is still mostly green with some bit of color change to yellow or red. Fruits MUST be mature before harvest (except where there is no need for ripening and produce is consumed as is, e.g. green bell pepper, green chili pepper, cucumber, etc) but not necessarily ripe, since ripening can continue outside of the parent plant (this is true in most cases), biochemical activities that leads to conversion of acid in green mature fruit/ vegetable, starch to sugars and other compounds, can continue after harvest in a lot of cases. The production of ethylene that converts chlorophyll to yellow/ red like colors continues after harvest. In fact in some, for ease of handling and longer shelf life, ripening is delayed after harvesting green in the mature state.

Hope this was helpful. All the best.

Good morning. Akinbode, has given an exemple of ripening/maturation for climateric fruits. Riepening for these type of fruits (e.g. banana, tomato,..., which need of a particular hormone for its maturation, that is ethylene), follows a different cinetic, which depends of the moment when the fruit pruduces ethylene to the atmosfere, that starts the final steps of the riepening. For the non-climateric fruits (e.g. grapeberry, cranberry, raspberry, etc.), the riepening/maturation follows a linear cinetic.

Hi Rasool,

I agree with views of Paulo and Akinbode...In a simple word maturity is a stage ready to pick a horticultural commodity but not always true. But it is true that when a fruit is in maturity all sort of assimilates are in a fruit and some sort of hormonal cue is needed to ripen it. If a fruit is climacteric (apple, banana, tomato etc) you could harvest it, means maturity stage coincides with maturity, however, a non-climacteric fruit (like lemon, mandarin etc) has to cross maturity stage to be ready to picked. It means it should be in ripening stage (conversion of complex carbohydrates into simple form, pigment change on the skin, softness etc) and ready to be eaten.

Good morning Umesh,

You've done an excellent synthesis os the subject in discussion, with the necessary distinction between climateric and non climateric fruits.

In your ansewer, I think instead of the sentence : "...means maturity stage coincides with maturity", it will be better the following "...means maturity stage coincides with ripeness". What do you think?

According to some chilean experts, in non-climateric fruits like citrus, ripe and mature can be considered as synonymous, but in climateric fruits mature means physiological maturity or harvest maturity, the stage in  which the fruit can later reach the edible maturity either naturally or artificially (by applying calcium carbide), satisfying the consumer’s taste

To understand their difference you need to know about climacteric and non-climacteric types of fruits.

1) Climacteric fruits such as Banana, apple, tomato can be harvested at different maturity stages. The fruit can be mature but not necessarily ripened. However keep in mind that the fruits can be mature and ripened at the same time. The growers can harvest their fruits at different maturity stages to take the advantage from the market prices. Such type of fruits can be ripened through application of ethylene or their ripening process can be slowed down through application of 1-MCP which inhibits the ethylene production. However 1-MCP should be applied at the right maturity stage to control the ripening. Such type of fruits show peak in ethylene production.

2) Non-climacteric fruits are those which should be harvested at fully ripened stage. Such as orange, strawberry, cherry, pomegranates etc. These fruits cannot be ripened with application of ethylene. However the ethylene can be applied for different purposes in such fruits e.g the degreening of oranges can be done through ethylene treatment. Such type of fruits do not show peak in ethylene production and their ethylene production continues in straight line.

Forexample we are working on ripening of strawberry fruit. If You are interested, look after this article:

Article Expression patterns of ethylene and polyamine biosynthetic g...