Preservation of postharvest quality of fresh cut cauliflower through simple and easy packaging techniques

Abstract

Increasing urbanization, changes in life style and involvement of more women into jobs has forced to find out easy way to get safe and nutritious foods. Fresh cut (FC) vegetables and fruits may satisfy these demands as healthy alternatives. FC processing gives additional value to fresh fruits and vegetables in terms of convenience, fresh, nutritious, and time saving. Therefore, the objective is to investigate the effect of different types of modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) and vacuum packaging during storage at low temperature on postharvest quality of FC cauliflower. Washed and surface water free cauliflower pieces were packed into different packaging techniques like i. without packaging (control); ii. polypropylene (PP) box iii. Styrofoam tray wrapped with cling film; iv. 1% perforated low density polyethylene (LDPE); v. sealed LDPE; vi. vacuum LDPE. After packaging, all samples were stored at refrigerator (4±1°C and 50±5% RH). The effectiveness of the packaging in extending shelf life with quality was evaluated by determining respiration rate, firmness, weight loss, external colour, ascorbic acid , total soluble solid (TSS), titratable acidity, pH, total sugar, reducing sugar, yeast, mould, total bacterial count (TBC) and sensory quality. At 10th day of storage, sensory quality in case of overall acceptability, control/unpacked FC cauliflower secured 4.4 scores that indicate unacceptable by the consumer's preference, while more than 8 (like very much to like extremely) scores were obtained by all type of packed FC cauliflowers. However, vacuum packed FC cauliflower obtained 7.5 scores (like moderately to like very much) whereas rest of the packaged FC cauliflowers scored around 4 (unacceptable) at 20th day of storage in case of overall acceptability.