A new quality parameter in tomato and tomato products: ergosterol.

The poor precision of the "percentage of discarded fruits" and "Howard mold count" methods has increased the importance of ergosterol for the microbiological quality evaluation of tomato and tomato products. Ergosterol, a constituent of the cell wall of some important vegetable parasites, such as molds, has been recently recognized as a potential objective parameter useful for the characterization of the quality of processing tomatoes. Thus, 15 mg of ergosterol/kg total solids has been stated as an acceptability maximum limit of tomato products.