Curing acceleration as an adaptive postharvest strategy for mid-autumn festival associated irregular harvest date of ‘Matou Wentan’ pomelo in Taiwan

‘Matou Wentan’ (Citrus grandis L. Osbeck) is an early-harvest pomelo cultivar and is often regarded as an important seasonal fruit for the mid-autumn festival in Taiwan.
The optimum harvest time, based on physiological maturity, is close to ‘White Dew’ (September 7-9); this is often unaligned with the mid-autumn festival which depends on the lunar calendar.
Harvest time every year varies (0 to 27 days) from ‘White Dew’, thus affecting postharvest management for farmers.
Freshly harvested ‘Matou Wentan’ fruit has a rigid peel (flavedo and albedo) and crispy juice sacs in segments.
Traditional ‘curing’ process takes 5-10 days for softening and flavor enrichment.
Therefore, a procedure to accelerate this curing process is developing while maintaining fruit quality.
Freshly harvested fruit (n=6) were examined for fruit quality changes following treatments of temperature (25, 35, or 45°C). The optimum heating temperature for curing acceleration was around 35°C resulting in little quality defects except for water loss.
The fruit cured at 45°C was severely injured and turned brown within 3 days.
To have the proper peel color, fruit exposed to 0, 25, or 50 μL L^‑1 ethylene at 30 or 35°C for 5 days, then wrapped with polyethylene (PE) bag individually, PE bag over single basket, or no package as control were further tested.
As the results, the fruit treated with 25 μL L^‑1 ethylene had a yellowish-green peel after a 4-day treatment at 30 or 35°C. We then refined the different combinations of temperature (32 or 35°C) and ethylene exposure (10 or 25 μL L^‑1) on fruit with proper packages (PE bags individually or whole basket) and all resulted in limited water loss and no shrinkage during long-term storage.
More details are being tested to integrate the adaptive postharvest procedures.
This will have a new, less than 5-day curing procedure meeting the sales standards for fruit quality.

IV Asian Horticultural Congress – AHC2023

L.-Y. Chang, W.-C. Chang

polyethylene (PE) bag, temperature, water loss

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2024.1404.54