EXTREMELY LOW ETHYLENE LEVELS IN AMBIENT AIR ARE STILL CRITICAL FOR KIWIFRUIT STORAGE

Kiwifruit is induced to soften in the presence of low levels of ethylene in storage ambient air.
Therefore, increasingly stringent recomendations of reducing ethylene levels have been set up.
However, not enough experimental data supporting such recomendations is available.
With the aim of providing this basic information, an experiment was set up with 0, 10, 50 and 100 ppb ethylene being supplied in continuous flow during cold storage.
Fruits with three different maturities were exposed, starting with harvest at 6.4 ° Brix and 2 and 4 weeks thereafter.
Results show that, as expected, there is a marked difference in softening according to ethylene levels and even at levels as low as 10 ppb there is still a gain in keeping firmer fruits with ethylene reduction.
Further, an additional experiment on ethylene contamination was set up, combining two levels (50 and 500 ppb) with two exposure lengths (2 and 7 days) at different ripening stages during cold storage.
Ethylene-free ambient resulted in firmer fruits, but differences in responsiveness were evident along storage period.

III International Symposium on Kiwifruit

J. Retamales, R. Campos

maturity, ethylene contamination, ethylene concentration, ethylene exposure, softening

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1997.444.88