So guys… we get sick when we play in rain for a long time or if we are in sun or if we are in excess cool weather, right? Similarly, the fruits and vegetables we eat every day will also get sick if they’re kept in temperature excess or below their critical temperature. Let’s see a few sicknesses of a few fruits and their symptoms.
Chilling injury: This injury occurs when the fruit is in low temperature and non-freezing for that fruit(10 C –15 C). Symptoms like surface discoloration, surface pitting, lack of ability to ripe and increased decay among others will be appearing.
‘Hongyang’ kiwifruit after 90 days of cold storage followed by 5 days of shelf life at 20°C.
(A) Normal kiwifruit.(B) Skin showing the brown symptom of CI (arrow).
( C) Normal flesh of kiwifruit.
(D) Flesh of kiwifruit showing the grainy symptom (arrow).
(E) The cross-section of the normal flesh.
(F) The cross-section of the flesh shows the grainy symptom (arrow).
(G) The longitudinal section of the normal flesh.
(H) The longitudinal section of the flesh showing the grainy symptom (arrow).
Freezing injury: This occurs when the fruit is below freezing point(0 C) and ice crystals form in the plant tissue at this temperature. Symptoms like a water-soaked appearance, mushy texture, complete collapse, and breakdown of the damaged areas will be seen.
Low sugar content commodities may freeze at freezing point (0 °C to -0.5 °C). High sugar content commodities may freeze below freezing point (-1 °C to -2 °C).
Management of chilling injury:
- Maintaining critical temperature
- Using MAS- Modified atmospheric temperature
- maintaining high RH
