In developed countries the participation of vegetables in human nutrition constantly increases. Nowadays the available time for cooking by women is reduced rapidly and always more people are eating meals which need little time to prepare. For this, industries produce frozen vegetables (and among them eggplant) which keep their high nutritional value and need less preparation for eating. Even though many hybrids and cultivars are used for frozen eggplant product by industries, no evaluation has been done for their suitability as frozen product. The objective of this investigation was to evaluate a number of new and commercial hybrids and cultivars for their frozen suitability. The new eggplant hybrids '5250 x A63/A76 F-1', 'M-5 x Dourga cv.', 'M-5 x Ronde cv.' and commercial F-1 hybrid `A63/A76' and `Dourga cv.' were cultivated in 1995 at the Agricultural Research Centre of Macedonia and Thrace and evaluated their suitability as frozen product in slices, while in 1998 the commercial cultivars and hybrids `Langada cv.', `N 29' and `Vista' were cultivated by farmers and evaluated as their suitability for frozen product in cubes. The results indicated that more whole slices gave the italian hybrid `A63/A76', followed by the France `Dourga cv.', while the new hybrids were inferior to the above hybrids and cultivars. Significantly more whole cubes were given by the hybrid `Vista' than `Langada cv.' and `N 29' (7.26 and 12.94 %, respectively). In conclusion, the hybrid-cultivars with straight short cylindical fruits are more suitable for frozen product in slices, while cultivars with ovoid fruits for frozen products in cubes.
