Impact of storage conditions on quality deteoration and duration of shelf life of fresh tomato in the household
2018
Kevrešan, Žarko | Mastilović, Jasna (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0921-8642) | Kovač, Renata | Bajić, Aleksandra (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0614-1387) | Gledić, Aleksandar | Ubiparip-Samek, Dragana (https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9193-5252)
Tomato is among favourite vegetables among consumers. Regular practice of tomato preservation in the households is in the refrigerator at the temperatures up to 6°C. Tomato is among the vegetables susceptible to chilling injuries. At the surface of tomato fruit affected with chilling injuries caused by low, but nonfreezing, temperatures the tissues weaken because they are unable to carry on normal metabolic processes. Various physiological and biochemical alterations occur at the affected areas that lead to the development of a variety of chilling injury symptoms, such as surface pitting, discoloration, internal breakdown, loss of flavour and decay. However, in the households, the consumers have two alternatives for tomato storage: either to store it in the refrigerator or to store it at room temperature. In our research we hypothesize that storage of tomato in the refrigerator, in spite of the fact that low temperature decrease weight loss and supress the fruit respiration rate leads to increase of wasted fruit due to quality loss due to chilling injuries. In order to test this hypothesis fresh tomato fruits were right after the harvest stored at 4 and at 20°C. The loss of quality in terms of fruit firmness decrease and visual appearance attributes was registered in two days periods. The firmness of tomato stored at room temperature decreased slowly and remained at acceptable level for 3 weeks. Varying of firmness of tomato fruits stored in the refrigerator varied in dependence of appearance of chilling injuries in initial stages, until complete loss of quality after two weeks of storage in refrigerator. Beside chilling injury damage tomato stored in refrigerator exhibited a number of other deficiencies: more expressed yellow tone of skin colour, less ascorbic acid and lycopene and more acids in fruit composition.
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