Determination of Bruising Damages of Tomato during Road Transportation Process

Introduction The most important post-harvest mechanical damage is bruising. Bruising occurs during the stages of handling, transporting and packaging due to quasi-static and dynamic loads. Vibrations of tomato fruits during transportation by truck will decrease their quality. More than 2.5 million tons damages have been reported during tomato transportation in Iran. Therefore, it is necessary to recognize different parameters of damages during road transportation in order to detect and prevent bruising injury. Materials and Methods In this study, healthy Super Queen verity of tomatoes devoid of any corrosion and mechanical damage multipliers were used. Aaverage of 7 and 5 pieces of fruit in each length and width, respectively in 13*25*37 cm boxes with a capacity of 8 kg were arranged. The boxes were divided into 2 types of truck suspension (model M2631 AIMCO, manufactured in 2010 with air suspension and Nissan trucks 2400, manufactured in 2010 with suspension spring). Boxes were established in three different heights truck, floor truck, height of middle and top of truck, in addition to two different situation boxes on the front axle (S1) and rear axle (S2). In each situation, three levels of height (H1), floor truck, the truck (H2) and the truck (H3) there. The location of each sample inside the fruit boxes bottom row (Loc1) and top (Loc2) boxes marked with marker. In this study, two types of road, highway asphalt and asphalt secondary road was used for transportation. Trucks and vans had the same distance route about 400 km. Fruits were transferred to Hamadan agricultural college. Rheology lab test was a hit with the pendulum. In this study, the amount of energy absorbed from the index (as a parameter to determine the sensitivity) and the fruits bruises were used. Hit test was done after transportation of fruits and transferring those to the laboratory in less than 2 hours. Impact energy products were considered higher than the dynamic submission, dynamic submission to the multiple ways in constant height (CHMI) were determined on the control fruits, impact energy yield limit dynamic range (0.0012) was Jules. Results and Discussion Analysis of variance showed that the main factors including truck, boxes of floor height, box situation on the front and rear axles of the vehicle as well as the location of the fruit (the top and bottom of the box) has a significant effect on energy absorption. There are also some double and triple interactions energy absorbed as a factor of bruising damage in the pendulum test was significant at the 5% possibility level. Means comparison showed that the effect of the truck in height. By increasing the height from the floor of the vehicle, bruising injury increased significantly. The results showed that the fruits which transported with air suspension are healthier than those with truck suspension spring. The maximum amount of absorption energy at third height (H3) spring suspension system (T2) and rear axle (S2) with the amount respectively 491.11 and 488.59 percent increase (compared with control fruit) belong the top row fruits and bottom row fruits inside the box (in secondary asphalt), and maximum resistance bruising in the first height (H1) air suspension system (T1) and front situation (S1) with 180.42 percent increase was observed to control fruits (in highway asphalt). The overall results show that fruit damages are low during transportation with the front axle vehicle. The results also showed that asphalt road highway and truck with air suspension system, Groups of maximum and minimum absorbed energy was more logical than truck suspension spring.