Influence of herbal extract and storage duration on fruit quality of china lime

Abstract

Thin edible organic coating helped to improve the fruit quality and are consumable without any side effects on health. China lime has good market value both at national and international level. The objective of the work was to study the Influence of herbal extracts and storage duration on fruit quality of china lime. An experiment was conducted at the Post Harvest Laboratory, Department of Horticulture, The University of Agriculture Peshawar during the year 2015-2016.The research was carried out by using Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with two factors repeated three times. The fruits of china lime were treated with various herbal extracts like ginger, garlic, lemon grass and chilli and stored for 40 days at temperature 20±10C with relative humidity 45-50%. The treated fruits of china lime were analyzed for various physic-chemical attributes at 0, 10, 20, 30, and 40 days intervals. The post-harvest application of herbal extracts and storage durations significantly influenced most of qualitative. A significant variation was recorded for various quality attributes when treated the china lime fruit with herbal extracts. However, less percent weight loss (20.79%), fruit juice pH (2.75), TSS (5.880Brix), and maximum fruit firmness (1.51kgcm-2), percent titratable acidity (6.01%), ascorbic acid contents (16.86 mg 100 ml-1), was recorded in fruits treated with garlic extracts. While, concerning storage duration, all the variables studied showed a significant difference after studying there physical-chemcial characteristics. It is concluded from the significant findings of present research that the china lime fruits should be treated with garlic extract and stored for 30 days to retain most of the quality attributes. It was concluded that post harvest treatments of herbal extract were more effective to maintain the quality attributes of china lime fruits in order to retain the maximum physical-chemical characteristics of china lime fruits. The fruit could be treated with garlic extract in order to store for 30 days at room temperature 20±10C with relative humidity of 45-50% to maintain the quality attributes.