**2. Materials and Methods**

### *2.1. Plant Materials*

"Tasti-Lee" tomato plants were selected from a tomato research block at the USDA Horticultural Research Laboratory Picos Farm in Fort Pierce, Florida, USA. The harvest maturity of the fruit in the field ranged from immature to full ripe (Figure 1). Sixty fruit of similar size (about 210 g) at each of six mature stages (red, light red, pink, turning, breaker, and mature green) were harvested on 27 December 2015 and stored in a 20 ◦C dark storage room (humidity: 90%) until they reached the full (red) ripe stage. For each harvest maturity group, when 45 fruits reached red stage (color a\* value ≈ 20), the fruits were randomly divided into three temperature treatment sub-groups: non-treated control, refrigeration (chilling; 5 ◦C air for 4 days), and blanching (heating; 100 ◦C water for 1 min, then ice water used to cool the fruits to room temperature within 3 min). The changes in core temperature were monitored after blanching. Immediately after the temperature treatment, fruits were further divided into five replicates with three fruits each. The experimental design is depicted in Figure 1.

**Figure 1.** Diagrammatic sketch of overall experimental design. Fruit harvested at six maturities were ripened at 20 ◦C and then treated by refrigeration (chilling, c), blanching (heating, h), or non-treated (n) as control.
