Impact of Storage Temperature (7°C) and Post-Harvest Pre-Treatments on Quality Characteristics and Storage Life of Tomato (LycopersiconEsculentum) Fruits

Abstract

Temperature has a remarkable effect on the rate of metabolic processes and quality characteristics of fruits and vegetables. Various post-harvest and pre-harvest treatments are applied to fruits and vegetables in order to extend the shelf life and preserve the quality characteristics for the longer duration of time. Each methods has their own advantages and limits. The present study was carried out with an objective to evaluate the impact of storage temperature and post-harvest treatments like edible coating, pre-cooling and combination of these on storage life and quality characteristic tomato fruit. Pre-treated fruits were stored at 7°C and evaluate the quality parameters like physiological weight loss (PLW), pH, TSS, titratable acidity, lycopene content and percentage of spoilage at the interval of three days during storage. It was noticed that increase in PLW (4.52%), TSS (3.7 box), lycopene content (1.67 mg/100g), percentage of spoilage (15.55%) and decrease in pH (4.0), titratable acidity (0.29 % citric acid) was noticed at the end of shelf life. All treated samples shows little resistance to chilling injury compared to control samples. Sample T3C0 (Hydro-cooling at 8 °C + without coating) have 18 days storage life with minimum spoilage. The activity of edible coating was reduced due to the effect of storage temperature, at this condition coating lose its stability and easily separated from the product. It can be concluded that post-harvest treatments play important role in order to extend the shelf life due to the effect of low temperature storage (7°C) fruits are very susceptible to chilling injury and spoiled rapidly.