Innovation of fruit coating with antifungal yeast to maintain the quality of postharvest strawberries

Abstract

Postharvest strawberries have a relatively short shelf life and the quality of fruit is rapidly declining, especially with a history of high gray mold fungus attacks during cultivation in the garden. The attack rate of fruit rot is high in the garden, causing the surface of strawberries to be colonized by pathogenic spores which results in strawberries becoming susceptible to postharvest disease. One of the main diseases of postharvest strawberries is gray mold rot caused by Botrytis cinerea. Fruit coating is one of the innovations used to extend shelf life and maintain the quality of fruit stored at room temperature. Coating of fruit with natural ingredients is still little researched, especially made from yeast. The aim of the study was to determine the effectiveness of coating postharvest strawberries with antifungal yeast at various levels of maturity on the quality and shelf life of strawberries. The results showed coating strawberries with yeast Debaryomyces hansenii was able to maintain the quality of the fruit, increase the shelf life of the fruit, and protect the fruit from the attack of postharvest pathogens with parasitism mechanism, without reducing the quality of fruit, so that it can be applied after the harvest of strawberries.