Effect of washing treatments on quality of banana fruits

Abstract

A study was conducted to check the efficacy of different washing treatments using sanitizers on the quality of banana fruits. Being a climacteric fruit crop, it suffers with shorter shelf life with loss of appearance under ambient conditions. The fruits were subjected to washing treatments for 5 minutes using aqueous ozone, hydrogen peroxide, Sodium hypochlorite and calcium hypochlorite solutions and then stored under ambient condition for 6 days. The fruits treated with sodium hypochlorite and aqueous ozone showed significantly minimum physiological loss in weight (14.23 and 14.28 per cent), minimum (22.38 and 22.63oB) total soluble solids, respiration rate (62.23 and 60.40ml CO2/kg/hr) and titratable acidity (0.63 and 0.62 per cent) was seen in sodium and calcium hypochlorite treated fruits as compared to untreated fruits. Highest sensory scores (7.00) were observed in the fruits treated with aqueous ozone. This experiment shows that there is immense scope for using ozone by the small holders to ensure quality banana fruits even in the local markets.