Shelf life of cocktail tomato extended with chitosan, chia mucilage and levan

Abstract

Tomato is among the most important parts of the human diet globally. However, due to its short shelf life, the produce faces the non-desired huge postharvest losses that can be ascribed to high ethylene emission, high respiration rate, and weight loss. Conventional approaches used to enhance the shelf life of cocktail tomatoes come with certain disadvantages such as chilling injury and investment cost. This study aimed to investigate the effects of bio-based coatings on the shelf life of cocktail tomatoes. The breaker stage tomato fruit were treated with chitosan (CS), chitosan+levan (CS-LVN), chitosan+mucilage (CS-MCLG), and chitosan+ mucilage+levan (CS-MCLG-LVN) edible coatings. Control (CTL) fruit received no treatment. Tomatoes were kept in cold storage (CST) for 30 days (d) at 10 °C temperature and 90–95% relative humidity (RH). At every removal, the fruit was kept for an additional 3 d at 20 °C and 60 ± 5% RH to determine the shelf life (SL) performance. Edible coating treatments minimized the weight loss, ethylene emission, respiration rate, and amount of unmarketable fruit and slowed down the synthesis of lycopene. The minimum weight losses and amount of unmarketable fruit were determined in the CS-MCLG-LVN coating treatment. CS-MCLG-LVN and CS-MCLG-treated fruit had the lowest ethylene emission and respiration rates. CS coating treatment manifested the highest L* value and malic acid content while the maximum total phenolic and total flavonoid contents were in CS-LVN. It can be concluded that CS-LVN, CS-MCLG, and CS-MCLG-LVN edible coatings maintained the postharvest quality of tomatoes for 30 d.