POST-HARVEST CONSERVATION OF “PIONEIRA” BANANA (Musa spp.) USING BABAÇU COCONUT OIL

The use of fruit coatings allows maintaining longer post-harvest quality of fruits, preserving their physicochemical characteristics (appearance, taste and texture) and increasing commercial acceptance. Thus, this work aimed to evaluate the effect of the application of babassu coconut oil as coating on ‘Pioneer’ banana (Musa AAAB) to preserve its quality characteristics and increase shelf life. The experiment was carried out at the Laboratory of soils of the Federal Institute of Tocantins, Araguatins - TO. Completely randomized design was adopted in a 6 x 5 factorial scheme (six purified babassu coconut oil concentrations as vegetal coating, T1 - 0.0%, T2 - 1.0%, T3 - 2.0%, T4 - 3.0%, T5 - 4.0%, T6 - 5.0% and five evaluation times, 1st, 3rd, 6th and 9th and 12th days after coating application), with four replicates. Products were applied to fruits by dipping, naturally dried and stored at room condition for 12 days. Variables evaluated were peel colour, total solids, pH, fresh mass loss. Data were submitted to normality and homogeneity tests, fulfilling the assumptions, analysis of variance was performed, with significance measured by the F test (p 0.05). Due to the quantitative variation sources (oil concentrations and evaluation times), regression analyzes were performed for all variables except for score scale method. Regarding fruit peel colour, babassu coconut oil had relevant effect, and treatment with 5% babassu oil concentration was the one that kept green peel colour longer than the other treatments. According to results obtained, the use of babassu coconut oil in post-harvest conservation of ‘Pioneer’ banana had significant effects, since all treatments with babassu oil concentrations showed efficiency in inducing delayed ripening, especially providing delayed increase in °Brix content of fruits.