Determining the suitable harvest time and packing method on fruit quality and cold-storage duration of four apricot cultivars.

Apricot fruit with short storage period should be offer to marketing immediately after harvest. High respiration rate and rapid ripening process of apricot fruit cause its short cold-storage and shelf life duration. Harvesting of apricot fruits in optimum time and suitable packing them increase their storage period. This study was carried out to determine the optimum harvest time and packing method of apricot fruits to prolong their storage period and decrease its wastes. Split-split factorial based on complete randomized block design were used for four traditional apricot cultivars include of "Germez shahroud", "Gorban maragheh", "Ordoubad" and "Nasiri". They were harvested at three harvesting stages based on fruit skin color. The first harvest was conducted when skin color had a predominantly green background with yellow tinges, the second and third harvest coincided with yellow background with green tinges and yellow-orange background color of fruits. Then fruits were packed in two methods included boxes with polyethylene covers and without it . Fruits stored at 0-2 ° c and 85% RH. For 0, 7, 14, 21 and 28 days. After each storage period, fruits were tested for their quality attributes such as shriveling, gel breakdown, decay percentage and fruit taste. Other fruit properties included fruit weight, firmness, TSS, pH and EC were measured and data were analyzed. The cluster analysis results related to quality traits of fruits revealed five distinct classes. Results showed that optimum harvest time of all cultivars is when the fruit skin color has a predominantly yellow background with green tinges. This is synchronous with 75 days after full bloom (DAFB) or 24987 growth degree hours (GDH) for "Germez Shahroud", 82 DAFB or 28224 GDH for "Gorban maragheh", 83 DAFB or 28420 GDH for "Ordoubad" and 81 DAFB or 27750 GDH for "Nasiri" cultivars. Use of polyethylene packaging prolong storage period. At these conditions, the fruits of "Germez Shahroud", "Gorban maragheh", "Ordoubad" and "Nasiri" could be cold-stored with suitable quality until 21, 28, 28 and 28 days, respectively.