Quality Traits and Storability Life of Peach (Prunus Persica L.) Fruit as Effected by Hot Water Dipping Treatment

Abstract

Due perishable nature of peach, it does not maintain its quality after harvest for an extended period. In order to increase or enhance the shelf life of peach to meet consumer's demand, a number of techniques such as treatment of fruit with hot water play key role in influencing fruit ripening processes. To study hot water treatment effect fruit quality and storability of peach fruit cv. 'Early Grand', an experiment was conducted at Post-harvest laboratory, Department of Horticulture, The University of Agriculture Peshawar using experimental design Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with two factors having and three replications. Healthy and disease free peach fruits were dipped in hot water at various temperatures (30, 40 and 50 degrees C) for five minutes and stored for various storage durations (0, 10, 20 and 30 days). The results revealed that hot water treatment (10 to 50 degrees C) significantly increased total soluble solid, TSS/TA ratio, total sugar, and decreased titratable acidity and ascorbic acid content of peach fruit. While increasing hot water treatment up to 40 degrees C, significantly increased fruit firmness and decreased weight loss and percent disease incidence of fruit. Similarly, total soluble solid, total sugar (%), TSS/TA ratio, weight loss increased, while fruit firmness, titratable acidity and ascorbic acid decreased in freshly harvested peach fruit to fruit stored for 30 days. It could be concluded that the hot water treatments at 40 oC and storage period for 10 days induce best results on postharvest life of peach.