Impact of pack-house chemicals treatments on quality of litchi during low temperature storage

Abstract

An experiment was conducted to study the impact of chemical treatments on postharvest quality attributes of freshly harvested litchi fruits. Litchi variety "Shahi" fruits were harvested at full maturity (ready-to-eat) from the orchard of National Research Centre for Litchi, Muzaffarpur, Bihar and transported to IARI, New Delhi where treated with sodium hypochlorite (0.2%), sodium hypochlorite (0.2%) + carnauba wax (10%), sodium hypochlorite (0.2%) + KMS (0.5%), sodium hypochlorite (0.2%) + KMS (0.6%), sodium hypochlorite (0.2%) + sodium chlorite (0.05%), sodium hypochlorite (0.2%) + sodium chlorite (0.06%) along with control and packed in punnets for storage study at 2 o C and 85-90 % RH. The observations related to quality parameters were recorded at 5 days intervals. The results revealed that all treatments reduced pericarp browning. Sodium hypochlorite (0.2%) in combination with KMS (0.5%) treated fruits were found most effective in retaining higher amount of moisture content, total soluble solids, reducing sugars, anthocyanin content and good sensory attributes in the fruits leading to lowest browning index with an extended shelf life up to 25 days. These findings confirmed that treatment with sodium hypochlorite (0.2%) followed by KMS (0.05%) could be used as alternative method to reduce pericarp browning and quality deterioration of litchi fruit during low temperature storage.