Pre-Harvest Treatments for Fruit Quality Improvement in Rainy Season Guava (Psidium guajava)

Swosti Debapriya Behera, Sanjay Pathak

Abstract: Rainy season or Ambe bahar guava crop gives low quality fruits having poor shelf life. The quality is poor due to infestation by insect pest like fruit fly and infection by disease like anthracnose. Various pre-harvest treatments viz. spraying of CaCl2 2 %, spraying of CaSO4 2 %, polythene bagging, brown paper bagging, spraying of CaCl2 2 % + polythene bagging, spraying of CaCl2 2 % + brown paper bagging, spraying of CaSO4 2 % + polythene bagging, spraying of CaSO4 2 % +brown paper bagging were tried at Faizabad, Uttar Pradesh, India during 2015-16 to find out ways for improving fruit quality. All treatments increased quality of guava fruits significantly. Among the treatments, CaCl2 2 % + polythene bagging proved the best in enhancing post harvest quality attributes viz. fruit size, fruit weight, fruit firmness, organoleptic quality, total soluble solids (TSS), acidity, TSS acid ratio, ascorbic acid, reducing sugar, non reducing sugar and total sugar.

Keywords: Ambe bahar, calcium chloride, calcium sulphate, polythene bag, post-harvest quality