Reducing Sultani Figs Losses During Markeeting by Thymol and Chitosan Dipping

Abstract

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of chitosan and thymol postharvest dipping on maintaining fruitquality attributes of Sultani figs. Ripe fig fruits gently picked manually and treated with 0.3 or 0.6 mM thymol and 2.5 or5 g/L chitosan in addition to water treatment then stored at 0°C and 85-90 % RH. A Samples of stored fruits were takenevery week to estimate determine fruit quality and storability. The results of the study showed that chitosan treatmentssignificantly reduced fruit weight loss and shriveling percent up to three weeks as compared with the untreated fruit.Thymol and chitosan treatments decreases the percentage of decay incidence and quantitative losses after one, two orthree weeks of cold storage plus two days at room temperature especially at the high concentration. All treatments causeda decrease in the percentage of quantitative losses after two or three weeks of storage as compared to control and 0.3 mMthymol. Chitosan significantly maintained fruit firmness, SSC, total and non-reducing sugars up to 3 weeks. In addition,thymol and chitosan treatments had higher phenolic content than control after 1 or two weeks.