Quality and Storage of Chinese ‘Dongzao’Jujube(Zizyphus Jujuba Mill)

摘要

‘Dongzao’ is one of the most excellent dessert/fresh jujube fruit. The ship of the fruitis like small apple, with special fragrance, thin peel, rich juice, crisp texture, and almost nochewing residues.The SSC and Vc contents are 34～38% and 3800 mg.kg-1 respectively. It also content mineralelements like potassium, iron, zinc, selenium, sodium, etc., and physiological activitycompounds like VB1,VB2, carotene flavonoids, nicotinic acid, cAMP and cGMP. The harvest time is at Mid. Oct.when the surface color changing burnt ochre red. Try to keep the stalks/stems on the fruits andavoids to make any bruise or wound injury during harvest, handling, and transportation.Pre-cooling is a very important step for jujube storage. Added disinfectant like hypochloritesodium into the cooling water is necessary. Jujube fruit is not sensitive to the low temperature,the optimum and safety storage temperature is -2±1°C. Jujube fruit storage room is a ventilatedenvironment, water evaporation from the fresh fruit is very heavy, the ideal relative humidity inthe storage room is 90～95%. According to the results of most researcher, jujube fruit isnon-climacteric respiration fruit, but CA storage also has benefit effects. Jujube fruit is sensitiveto low O2 and high CO2 .The recommended atmosphere composition for CA storage is:8～10%O2, 0～0.5%CO2. Atmosphere in the storage room should be renewed intermittently toeliminate the harmful metabolites like ethanol or acetic aldehyde etc.Jujube fruit is suitable to use hypobaric storage.The hypobaric container should be: thermosconductive well, with equipment to increase RH, control the pressure stably, and measure thegas composition in the hypobaric condition. Post harvest disease is the main factor to short thestorage life. The pathogen infected fruit during growth in the field. Hot-water treatment(50～55°C, 6～8 min.) seems to be the prospect way to control the fruit diseases. Because the peel ofthe ‘Dongzao’ jujube is very thin, it is important to make good package to avoid mechanicalinjury during transportation. Polystyrene foam box is usually selected astransportation/carriage package. For commercial sales, small paper board box is usuallyselected.ed.