Abstract:The texture qualities and pectin characteristics of three pepper varieties for fermentation minced pepper (FMP) processing were studied, including ‘Yanhong’, ‘Tianyu’ and ‘Jinta’. The results showed compared with ‘Yanhong’ and ‘Tianyu’, the differences in fruit length, fruit weight, moisture content and surface microstructure of ‘Jinta’ were found. Among of them, ‘Jinta’ showed larger size, higher moisture content, and sparse tissue structure. In addition, the hardness, stickiness and stickiness of ‘Jinta’ were the highest in three pepper varieties, which were significantly different from those of ‘Yanhong’ and ‘Tianyu’ (P < 0.05). For pectin characteristics, ‘Jinta’ presented higher water soluble pectin (WSP) and sodium carbonate solute pectin (SSP) content and molecular weight of WSP than others, and lower CSP content and molecular weight of CSP and SSP. The content of WSP rhamnose, CSP and SSP arabinose in ‘Jinta’ was significantly higher than that in ‘Yanhong’ and ‘Tianyu’ (P < 0.05), the content of CSP rhamnose was lower than that of ‘Yanhong’ and ‘Tianyu’, the content of SSP rhamnose and WSP arabinose was lower than ‘Tianyu’ but higher than ‘Yanhong’. The correlation analysis showed that there were extremely positive correlations between hardness and WSP content, SSP content and WSP molecular weight (P < 0.01). Overall, compared with ‘Yanhong’ and ‘Tianyu’, ‘Jinta’ showed high WSP content, low CSP content and molecular weight of CSP and SSP, which led to the instability of cell structure and further induced water loss and pectin degradation during processing and preservation. Therefore, ‘Yanhong’ and ‘Tianyu’ were more suitable for maintaining the texture qualities of FMP compared with ‘Jinta’.