PHYSICO-CHEMCIAL QUALITY OF APPLE CV. GALA MUST FRUIT STORED AT LOW TEMPERATURE

Abstract

Apple cultivar „Gala must? was stored at 10±2 oC and 80-85% relative humidity and evaluated for physicochemical quality and attributed at 30, 60, 90, 120 and 150 days storage intervals. Apple storage resulted an increase in the rate of weight loss with increasing storage duration and thus the maximum weight loss (1.24%) was recorded with 120 days storage period. The flesh firmness declined from the maximum (7.03 kg cm-2 ) in fresh fruits to the minimum of 4.31 kg cm-2 with storage for 150 days. Increasing storage duration increased the total soluble solids content from 17.0% in fresh fruits to 19.06% in fruits stored for 150 days. The fruit pH and the percent reducing sugars increased from 3.47 to 3.68 and 10.0 to 11.93 when storage was extended from 0 to 150 days, respectively, but the non-reducing sugars declined significantly from the maximum of 3.20% to the minimum of 1.45% during the storage for 150 days. Organolyptic quality test revealed that different quality attributes such as taste, color and texture declined with storage resulting in decreased overall acceptability score from 7.23 in fresh fruits to 6.56 with 120 and 150 days storage respectively.