2010 top fruit season review: Brian Lovelidge reports from the EMR Top Fruit Storage Member's Day

摘要

Firmness of fruit coming out of store has improved significantly in recent years according to WWF Qualytech's Dr Martin Luton, who monitors stored fruit quality. The main reasons for this are the increasing use of Smartfresh, notably for Cox and Bramley, and the 5 and 1 (5% C02, 1% 02) storage regime. In his annual review of the growing and storage seasons he said that Smartfresh "has re-written the rule book" for Cox's firmness (in particular). The upward trend began in 2008-2009 when the average penetrometer reading for the variety was 7.6kg, compared with 7.0kg for the previous season. It was 7.7kg last season and 7.9kg this February.