NEW POSTHARVEST TECHNOLOGIES FOR BLUEBERRIES

Former research at the Institute showed that blueberries respond to controlled atmosphere storage (Clayton-Greene, 1993). The technology was successfully applied to a refrigerated shipping container, allowing sea freight export to Europe.

This technology helped to overcome one of the major factors affecting Australian horticultural exports, the ‘tyranny of distance’. Even though air freight is the fastest mode of transport to distant markets, it often is expensive, does not provide adequate temperature control and can be at times unreliable or not available.
Sea freight offers good temperature control, more available space and is usually cheaper than air freight.
The CA technology had been instrumental in overcoming the rather long voyage times.
One disadvantage of using refrigerated CA shipping containers for the export of blueberries is the large amount of fruit that is landed at a particular destination and has to be marketed in a relative short time span.
Some growers will also have problems to harvest 3–4 tonnes of blueberries in 2–3 days.

One way to overcome these problems is to apply a beneficial atmosphere to smaller units of fruit.
Earlier research into Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP) had shown potential for blueberries (Tomkins, pers. comm.).

V International Symposium on Vaccinium Culture

D. Bläsing

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1993.346.49