EFFECT OF POSTHARVEST TREATMENTS ON QUALITY ATTRIBUTES AND SHELF LIFE OF MANDARIN (Citrus reticulata BLANCO)

Abstract

Healthy, mature, and fairly even-sized mandarins were harvested from a typical mandarin orchard to examine various storage techniques and discover an efficacious method to downsize the postharvest loss of mandarin fruits under ambient storage conditions. The allotted number of harvested mandarins were separately dipped in bavistin (0.1%), calcium chloride (1%), and clove oil (1%) individual solutions. A set of the collected mandarins was packaged in polythene; an assigned number of them was packaged in polythene only after immersing in bavistin solution, and the rest were neither treated nor packaged. All those mandarins were stored at ambient room conditions in a Completely Randomized Design (six treatments and four replications, each unit had fifteen samples); they were analyzed at an interval of every four days. A combination of bavistin dip and polythene packaging, and polythene packaging alone, drastically reduced the weight loss of mandarins. Similarly, juice content and titratable acidity were retained maximum in those cases, but TSS was found lowest in them. The fruits that were treated with bavistin and later packaged in polythene thrived up to seventy-eight days from the day of harvest.