Journal of Crop Production and Processing

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Because of its tenderness, long distance between field and consumer locations and unsuitable condition of transportation, 30 – 40 percent of strawberry fruits is wasted during the transportation between field to markets. One of the recommended ways for cutting down the wastes of strawberry is application of calcium salts after harvest stage to increase the content of Ca2+ in fruit flesh. For this reason, the selected fruits were treated by immersing them in 0, 25, 50 and or 75 mmol/lit concentrations of CaSO4, CaCl2 or Ca(NO3)2 for 4 min. After drying in atmospheric tempetature, fruits were stored at 5°C for 5 and for 10 days. To evaluate the effect of calcium solutions on fruit quality, some quantitative and qualitative tests were carried out on them. The results showed that by increasing the concentration of calcium salts, the amount of acidity and calcium of fruits is significantly increased, but the percentage of mouldy fruits is decreased. In most cases, the 50 and 75 mmol /lit concentrations of CaSO4 showed similar effects. Among the different calcium solutions, Ca(NO3)2 had the best effect on improvement of fruit quality, such as increasing the calcium and firmness of fruit , but CaSo4 prohibited the moulding of fruits better than other solutions. By increasing the period of storage from 5 to 10 days, the amount of acidity and firmness decreased significantly, while mouldness percentage increased. The organoleptic test showed that when the concentration of CaCl2 and Ca(NO3)2 solutions is increased, the acceptability of treated samples is decreased by consumers. Because of the bitter taste, the least score was given to the samples treated by 75 mmol/lit concentration of Ca (NO3)2 solution. The panelists didn’t recognize any difference in taste between control and samples treated by 25 mmol/lit concentration of CaSO4 and CaCl2 solutions. None of the treatments showed initial attributes (tenderness and shape) of fruits after storage period. This method isn't recommended to increase the strawberrys' shelf life for home use, but it can be used for the ones which are to be consumed in food processing industries.

Keywords: Strawberry, Calcium solutions, Immersion, Quality, Shelf life

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