Effect of different bagging materials on guava fruit physiology and its quality attributes

Abstract

Guava fruit is a very nutritious and fairly rich source of minerals, vitamins, and dietary fiber thus medicinally rich to cure stomach-related problems. Thus it's a need of hour to produce quality fruits without any internal or external defects or disorders as well as fruits should be free from chemical residues. The problem to produce the desired quality of fruits can be overcome by the use of pre-harvest bagging technology. Thus an experiment was conducted to evaluate the performance of different bagging materials on fruit appearance and quality. The findings revealed that the maximum increase in fruit mass (36.38%), fruit length (20.64%), fruit grade (30.23%), ascorbic acid content (7.36%) and TSS (48.65%) were observed as compared to the control in perforated polythene bags bagged at 30 days after fruit set (PEBD2), newspaper bagged at 30 days after fruit set (NPBD2), perforated polythene bagged at 15 days after fruit set (PEBD1) and butter paper bagged at 15 days after fruit set (BPBD1), respectively, whereas maximum reduction in fruit scar (93.78) recorded in newspaper bagged at 15 days after fruit set (NPBD1). Findings indicated that physio-chemical attributes of bagged fruits positively altered with no scar on fruit skin and without pest infestation thus ensuring better fruit quality, optimum production and consumer acceptance. Thus, bagging is cost-effective technology, warrants physiologically improved quality fruit production with consumer satisfaction.