Effect of precooling on quality of pear fruits during storage

Abstract

The study was planned to evaluate the effect of precooling methods such as hydrocooling (HC), forced air cooling (FAC) and evaporative cooling (EC) on postharvest quality of pear fruit under cold storage conditions. The pear fruit were harvested at the physiological mature stage, sorted, graded, and packed in plastic crates. The fruit were subjected to HC, FAC and EC treatments to remove the field heat. In all the precooling methods, a digital thermometer was used to monitor the temperature of fruit pulp until a steady temperature (5.2°C) was achieved. After giving the precooling treatments the fruits were packed in corrugated fibre board boxes and stored in cold room (0-1 °C and 90-95% relative humidity). The stored samples were evaluated periodically at 15 days intervals up to 75 days for physico-chemical quality attributes. The results of the study indicated that FAC maintained lower physiological weight loss (3.51 %) and decay (3%), retained higher firmness (13.67 lb force), organoleptic score (7.52 out of 9), TSS (12.52 °B), total sugars (8.05%), acidity (0.27%) and total phenols (39.28 mg GAE/100g) during storage as compared to control. The HC treatment was almost similar to FAC in maintaining the quality of pear fruits. These two methods were convincingly better than EC and control. The results demonstrated the effectiveness of FAC and HC to prolong the storage life of pear fruits for 60 days as compared to only 45 days in case of control fruits.