Effect of postharvest treatments on physical characteristics of mango

Abstract

The present postharvest investigation was aiming to assess the effect of various postharvest treatments on the storage behaviour of Mango cv. Himsagar during the year 2016-17 in the postharvest laboratory of Department of Horticulture and Postharvest Technology, Institute of Agriculture, Visva-Bharati, Sriniketan. Fresh fruits of uniform size, shape, colour, free from disease and bruises were harvested at physiological mature stage and after pre-cooling, desapping and washing were given various postharvest treatment of sodium hypochlorite (NaOCl: 100, 150, 200ppm), 6-benzyladenine (BA: 50, 100, 150ppm) and hot water (52 to 55o C) for 5, 10 and 15 minutes. The fruits were subjected to air dried and kept in 5 ply corrugated boxes (5% ventilation) with newspaper lining and stored in ambient conditions. The fruits were analysed for various physical quality attributes at different storage intervals up to 12 days. The results revealed that minimum physiological loss in weight (0, 3.07, 5.98 and 10.89%) and high surface (shrinkage) score (5, 5, 4.8 and 4.4) of the fruits after 3, 6, 9 and 12 days respectively were observed in BA (100ppm) treated fruits during storage. Moreover, higher flesh firmness retention and palatability rating have best resulted from BA treated fruits during storage. Hot water treatment for 5 minutes was found to be best in controlling the microbial spoilage percentage in all analysis intervals. This study shows that the storability and physical quality of mango cv. Himsagar can be favourably influenced during storage when treated with BA and hot water treatment.