Effect of pre-storage hot air and hot water treatments on post-harvest quality of mango (Mangifera indica Linn.) fruit

Abstract

Mature, green and fresh mango fruits were harvested from an orchard and sorted before they were subjected to hot air (HA) and hot water (HW) treatments. Before treatment, the fruits were washed with clean water, disinfected for 10 min in 0.385% m/v of sodium hypochlorite and allowed to air-dry at 26 °C before they were separately immersed in HA and HW at 52 and 55 ºC for 1, 3 and 5 min each before storage at 28 ± 2 ºC and 75 ± 5% relative humidity inside sterilized desiccators where the fruit peel colour change was evaluated at intervals of 5days for 20 days while fruits that were not heat treated served as control. Each treatment contained a replicate of five fruits. After 20 days in storage, the heat-treated fruits were then assessed for post-harvest quality characteristics including weight loss, firmness, titratable acidity (TA) and total soluble solids (TSS). Only fruits treated with HA at 52 °C-3 min and 55 °C-3 min retained the mango peel greenness for 20 days while those treated with HW at 55 ºC-1min and 55 ºC-3 min equally retained the peel greenness but for 15 days in storage. Thus, they were considered as effective and interestingly, the weight loss, firmness; TA and TSS of the treated fruits were not significantly affected by these effective treatments as compared with untreated fruits.