to the day 5 fruit and this may result from the degradation of certain volatile components in the over-ripe fruit. According to Olias et al. (1995), during the first stage of maturity, when green odour prevailed, ester concentrations were low. How- ever, their number increased during m They were probably formed from reactions of alcohols and organic acids catalyzed by alcohol acyl transferases which are highly active during fruit maturation and appear to have an important role in biosynthesis. Variation of volatile compounds in different portions of the fruit during ripening was too little to give any significance. Therefore, scores along PC2 (12%) could not be explained.