Abstract
BackgroundPeach fruits are highly perishable leading to many pre- and post-harvest problems, which adds to the reduction in the potential yield and productivity. Chitosan is a natural polysaccharide, produced after alkaline chitin deacetylation. It is one of the most preferred biopolymers due to its biocompatibility, antioxidant, anticancer, biodegradability, antimicrobial, and non-toxic properties as well as being an economical material. A pre-harvesting experiment was carried out based on the problems of peach and the importance of chitosan.ResultsPeach trees were foliar sprayed with different concentrations of chitosan (0, 0.50, 0.75, and 1.0%) at different times (30, 50, and 70 days after full bloom) to elucidate the effect of chitosan to peach yield and fruit quality. The results showed that foliar application of chitosan (1%) caused significant increases in fruit weight, volume, tree yield−1, fruit firmness, titratable acidity, and ascorbic acid content but caused significant decreases in total soluble solid fruit juice pH and disease incidence of peach fruit. Similarly, foliar application of chitosan after 50 days of full bloom increased fruit weight, volume, yield tree−1, firmness, titratable acidity, and ascorbic acid content with the number of fruit kg−1, total soluble solids, juice pH, and disease incidence as compared to other application times.ConclusionsIt is concluded that chitosan at 1% applied after 50 days of full bloom improved most of the peach attributes studied compared to the other concentrations of chitosan at 0.50 and 0.75, and control for the production of quality peach fruit.
Highlights
Peach fruits are highly perishable leading to many pre- and post-harvest problems, which adds to the reduction in the potential yield and productivity
Peach fruits suffer from high susceptibility to flesh softening that makes it more sensitive for pathogen attack and deterioration leading to a shorter handling period and limited marketability
Chitosan induces the synthesis of plant hormones such as gibberellins, which are responsible for the development of ovaries into fruits
Summary
Peach fruits are highly perishable leading to many pre- and post-harvest problems, which adds to the reduction in the potential yield and productivity. In order to increase or enhance the shelf life of peach to meet consumer’s demand, a number of techniques such as fumigation and pre-harvest spraying of nutrients are used to overcome the postharvest losses of fruit commodities (Neo and Saikia 2010). Post-harvest practices for maintaining fruit characters of improved marketing capability and extended shelf life are seriously considered. It would be achieved by reducing the quality losses due to the physiological and biochemical changes that fruits undergo after harvesting. Efforts are being made to find effective and safe techniques to control fruit post-harvest diseases, reduce quality losses, and increase the production and quality of fruits, as an alternative to the use of synthetic fungicides (Mohamed and Akladious 2017; Mohamed et al 2018)
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