Determining the Concentration Rates of Gibberellic Acid (GA3) as Ripening Inhibitor of Lakatan Banana (Musa acuminata AAA Group)

Abstract

Lakatan (Musa acuminata AAA Group) is one of the most essential banana variety commodities in the Philippines as a tropical country. This present study was conducted to determine and investigate the effects of (GA3) Gibberellic Acid in different concentration rates as post-harvest treatments on the shelf life and quality of bananas like physiological weight, peel color, and its pulp-to-peel ratio to determine which of treatments can prolong the shelf life of the banana; and to evaluate the most effective rates of GA3 that have the highest efficacy against the rapid ripening activity of ‘Lakatan’ banana variety as well as banana sample are soaked into the different concentration of treatment with the duration of five minutes then air dried for ten minutes and put into a polyethylene plastic cellophane which was open with cardboard boxes in each replication and placed under room temperature. This study was arranged in a Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with five treatments and replicated three times. The treatments were: where T1 – is a control which contains 1000 ml pure distilled water, T2 -consists of 100 ml GA3 mixed with 900 ml water, T3 -comprised of 200 ml GA3 mixed with 800 ml water, T4 – consists of 300 ml GA3 mixed with 700 ml water and T5 – contained 400 ml GA3 mixed with 600 ml water. This design was utilized to show the results intended for this study. Results of the study revealed highly significant differences among using different concentration rates of plant growth hormones GA3 as post-harvest treatments like cumulative physiological loss in weight, shelf life, peel color index, pulp peel ratio, No. Of days that the samples start to ripen, no. of ripe fingers, no. of unripe fingers, no. of days that all the models are fully unripe, and no of days that the pieces are fully ripened. Keywords: plant growth hormones, ripening, Lakatan, Musa, postharvest, distilled water, gibberellic acid