Comprehensive Evaluation of Plums Quality Based on Principal Component Analysis and Cluster Analysis

To investigate the quality characteristics of different varieties of plums, the quality such as appearance, physicochemical properties, and sugar and acid composition of 12 varieties were analyzed. At the same time, principal component analysis and cluster analysis were employed to evaluate the quality characteristics of 12 varieties comprehensively. The results showed that different varieties of plum exhibited rich diversity in appearance, physicochemical properties, sugar and acid composition. Sugar and acid composition, color, single fruit weight, fruit density, and fruit shape index were key indicators for evaluating the quality of plums. Among the 12 varieties, ZH, SXP, ALS, XL, XTL had a positive values, represent a good quality. Among them, the quality characteristics of ZH and SXP were high juice yield, soluble solids, total sugar content, and color quality. The quality characteristics of ALS included the highest total sugar, total sweetness, sweet acid ratio, and sugar acid ratio. The quality characteristics of XL and XTL were high soluble solid content, sugar acid ratio, and sweet acid ratio, but low juice yield. The results above served an important reference to screen plum varieties for different purposes.