FRUIT QUALITY AND SENESCENCE RELATED CHANGES IN SWEET ORANGE CULTIVAR BLOOD RED UNI-PACKED IN DFIFFERENT PACKING MATERIALS

The research work on fruit quality and senescence related changes in sweet orange (Citrus sinensis) cv. Blood Red was conducted at Nuclear Institute for Food and Agriculture (NIFA), Peshawar during 2003-2004. The fruits of sweet orange were stored for 75 days at room temperature in different uni-packing materials i.e. polyethylene, cellophane, polyethylene green, wax paper, kraft paper and news paper. It was found that taste and visual quality significantly decreased with 45 days storage at room temperature. Increasing storage duration resulted in significant increase in weight loss, total soluble solids and TSS/Acid ratio, while Ascorbic acid content and percent acidity decreased with extension in storage duration. Cellophane and polyethylene uni-packing resulted in significant retention of taste and visual quality over 45 days storage, with minimum weight loss of 1.18% and 1.33% respectively, and high ascorbic acid content (60.45 mg/100 ml as compared to 44.86 mg/100 ml) in control over 75 days storage at room temperature. There was a slight decrease in percent acidity in polyethylene (1.34%) and cellophane (1.31%) uni-packing as compared to 1.68% in control. Total soluble solids increased with increase in storage duration with maximum increase in control and news paper uni-packing (12.73% each), which was significantly higher than Cellophane (11.60%) and polyethylene (11.73%) after 75 days. Similarly TSS/acid ratio also increased with increasing storage with maximum increase in control (12.18) but was significantly lower in polyethylene green (7.61), cellophane (7.64) and polyethylene (8.95) after 75 days storage.