Effect of relative humidity on pomegranate quality under simulated ambient storage conditions

The effects of relative humidity (RH) on the quality of pomegranate fruit (‘Wonderful’) stored in ambient temperature (20°C) under low RH (65±6.79%) and high RH (95±1.23%) conditions were studied.
Significantly high weight loss, up to 29.13±1.49% at day 30, was observed in fruit stored at low RH compared to 5.78±0.44% at a high RH. Fruit stored under low RH was also severely shrivelled and reduced in size.
The high RH environment better maintained the fruit colour, texture and chemical quality attributes.
A regression model was developed to estimate the time history of weight loss of pomegranate stored under 65 and 95% RH ambient storage conditions.
The equations had a high goodness-of-fit with R-squared values of 0.99 and 0.94 for low and high RH, respectively.
For a 30-day storage period, the weight loss was estimated to a worth $0.58 kg^-1 and $0.11 kg^-1 under low and high RH conditions, respectively.
These findings show that pomegranate fruit should preferably be stored at RH conditions ≥95% to maintain appearance, sensory quality and reduce weight loss.

VII International Conference on Managing Quality in Chains (MQUIC2017) and II International Symposium on Ornamentals in association with XIII International Protea Research Symposium

M. Mukama, A. Ambaw, T.M. Berry, U.L. Opara

Punica granatum, weight loss, shrivel, appearance, chemical attributes

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2018.1201.36