ORIGINAL ARTICLE https://doi.org/10.1007/s10341-018-0365-y Erwerbs-Obstbau Sensory Acceptability of the Autochthonous Fruits of Bosnia and Herzegovina Challenges and Possibilities for Food Industry Adnan Alihodzic 1 · Fuad Gasi 1 · Pakeza Drkenda 1 · Asima Akagic 1 · Amila Vranac 1 · Mekjell Meland 2 · Osman Music 1 · Nermina Spaho 1 Received: 9 February 2017 / Accepted: 13 December 2017 © Springer-Verlag GmbH Deutschland, ein Teil von Springer Nature 2018 Abstract Introduction and background: Autochthonous fruits in Bosnia and Herzegovina (B&H) represent great opportunities for fruit breeding, because they could be grown without costly agricultural inputs and offer valuable assets for the fruit processing industry providing a specific and different sensory taste for the fruit products. Hence, the objective of this study was to sensory evaluate fruits from 34 autochthonous apple and 29 pear cultivars in 2012 and 2013 from an ex-situ collection in B&H by eight trained panelists, using Quantitative Descriptive Analysis (QDA). Experimental: Flavour of fruits was described by the eight sensory attributes a) flavour: odour intensity, b) sweet, c) sour, d) green, fruit, e) floral flavour, f) typically, g) after taste and h) overall conception and subjected to principal component analysis (PCA) to visualise the sensory attributes. Results: For apple, the traditional cvs. ‘Prijedorska Zelenika’, ‘Paradija’, ‘Srebreniˇ cka’, ‘Bukovija’ and ‘Ljepocvijetka’ reached the best flavour scores in both years, while in pear, cvs. ‘Takiša’, ‘Hambarka’, ‘Dolokrahan’ and ‘Kaˇ cmorka’ exhibited the best flavour in both years, followed by cvs. ‘Begarika’, ‘Jeribasma’, ‘Ahmetova’ and ‘Hambarka’ with intense floral flavour and odour. In these tastings, B&H grown apple cv. ‘Golden Delicious’ also scored highly compared with cvs ‘Idared’, ‘Granny Smith’ and ‘Gala’ with a lesser characteristic apple flavour and pear cvs ‘Williams’ and ‘Sweet Harrow’ scored better than ‘Alexander Lukas’ and ‘Gellerts’ from B&H. Keywords Apple (Malus domestica L.) pear · Biodiversity · Consumer · Flavour · Pomology · Under-exploited fruit · Taste  Nermina Spaho n.spaho@ppf.unsa.ba 1 Faculty of Agricultural and Food Sciences, University of Sarajevo, Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina 2 Norwegian Institute for Agricultural and Environmental Research, Bioforsk Øst, Lofthus, Norway K