Sustainable Postharvest Handling of Minimally Processed Melon Fruits

摘要

Minimally processed products (ready-to-eat) fruits and vegetables, have continuously increased in the past years due to consumer life style. Sustainable commercial horticultural success depends on satisfying consumer requirements. However, fresh fruits and vegetables are highly perishable and losses can be of great importance if postharvest correct measures are not provided. Quality of fresh horticultural products can not be improved by postharvest technologies, only can be maintained, what means those products must be of high quality at harvest. Moreover, ready to eat fresh-cut fruits and vegetables need more care to preserve their quality through shelf-life. Several studies have been conducted regarding the preservation of fresh-cut horticultural products and the respective quality, giving priority to methods that reduce decay avoiding negative effects to human health and environment. Melons are commercially important as fresh-cut, mainly for fruit salad. The objective of our research was to apply environmental and human health friendly techniques to preserve freshcut fruit quality through storage. Cylinders melon cv. 'Omega F1' were cut from the pulp of just harvested fruits and subjected to dipping for 1 minute on a solution of 1% or 1.5% CaCl_2, then stored at 5°C. Measurements of weight loss, firmness, soluble solids content (SSC) and titratable acidity were performed after 0, 4 and 6 days. It was observed a positive effect of dipping fresh-cut melon pulp cylinders in calcium chloride up to 1.5% on their quality preservation during storage. This effect was mainly on preserving flesh firmness and reducing weight loss.