Evaluation indicators of explosion puffing Fuji apple chips quality from different Chinese origins

•Apple chips were prepared by explosion puffing drying technology.•Difference of quality of apple chips from nine Chinese origins were evaluated.•Evaluation indicators of apple chips were selected by ANOVA, CA, PCA, and SCA.

In this study, sixteen evaluation indicators of explosion puffing Fuji apple chips from nine different origins in China were analyzed, and the most important evaluation indicators were obtained by analysis of variance (ANOVA), correlation analysis (CA), principal component analysis (PCA) and system cluster analysis (SCA). Results of ANOVA showed that quality of apple chips from different origins showed significant differences (P < 0.05). The coefficient of variation (CV) values of sixteen evaluation indicators for apple chips from nine origins were 5.39 %–56.26%. Through CA results, some indicators were correlated to each other within a certain range, such as crude fat content and crispness. Five principle components were extracted through PCA with eigenvalue of over 1, and the cumulative contribution was achieved at 91.06%. Based on the above results, five characteristic indicators of apple chip quality were obtained by SCA. These were crude fiber content, crispness, titratable acid content, production rate and expansion ratio.