Evaluation of the effect of fruit coating on shelf life extension of lime (Citrus aurantifolia) under different storage condition

Purpose: Lime fruit, a non-climacteric, seasonal crop, becomes unmarketable after 1-2 weeks from harvesting. Even though, lime is stored under low temperature conditions, the shelf life of which lasted about 4-6 weeks due to low rate of perishability. Research Method: The study was conducted to evaluate the effect of coating formulation under ambient (30°C, 65% RH), cold (13±2°C and 85% RH), zero energy cooling chamber [ZECC], (16-18°C, 65% RH). Thephysiochemical attributes were evaluated in triplicate and data were analyzed using ANOVA and a probability value of p 0.05 was adopted. Finding: The storage life of citrus fruits was extended up to 15, 30, and 40 days under ambient, ZECC, and cold storage respectively by protecting physicochemical attributes such as low weight loss, TSS, titratable acidity, pH, juice yield, chlorophyll (a, b and total chlorophyll content) and surface colour with respect to L*, a* and b* values. The overall performance of different treatments demonstrated that the wax coating treatment for lime fruits under low temperature storage proved better performance compared with all other treatments. The coated fruits exhibited the retention of physicochemical characteristics significantly (P 0.05) by lowering the fruit spoilage. Research limitations: Even though mechanical application of wax formulations was effective; it was not practiced in the experiment. Originality/Value: The wax coating treatment can be utilized on commercial scale to enhance the shelf life and to maintain the quality of lime fruits combined with low temperature storage.