ECONOMICS OF COLD STORAGE OF GRAPES

Perlette is one of the commercial cultivars of Northern India occupying 90 percent area under grapes in this region.
Its maturity time synchronizes in different states and cause lot of problems for its marketing.
High temperature and low humidity prevailing at this time of harvesting (June) further aggravate the losses as refrigerated transport facilities are lacking and reduce net returns.
Studies with one to three pouches of dual release sulphur dioxide generator (grape guard) with 1.12 per cent perforation in the polyliner as wrapper and packed in 2 kg vented corrugated fibre board carton was initiated from 1986–88. Such packs were stored in cold storage (0–3°C, RH 85–90%) for 40 days.
All the pouches tried had significantly lower losses than untreated grapes, however, three pouches showed the lowest losses.
Net profits of grapes in three pouches/carton basis was higher than one pouch, two pouches and untreated grapes.
Such packaging and cold storage treatments proved beneficial in regulating the market supply of grapes.

Frontier in Tropical Fruit Research

S.S. Sandhu, J.S. Randhawa

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1992.321.103