Post-harvest management for longer shelf-life of guava

摘要

Guava is known as 'Apple of Tropics' and is an important fruit crop owing to its high nutritive and antioxidant properties. Despite, high nutraceutical properties and health advantages, there are many problems which limit its distribution and marketability. Being a climacteric fruit, it leads to higher ethylene evolution and respiration rate which enhance the softening, susceptibility to chilling and diseases and reduce the shelf life of fruits. To minimize the risk, farmer sell their orchards to themiddleman which is a major drawback in this line and get very low price of their orchards. Therefore, there is urgent need to explore proper supply management chain along with effective technologies to the farmers at ground level, so that they can selltheir own produce and get desired price. Some recent innovative technologies, like use of harvesting tools, ecofriendly coating materials, packaging material, postharvest treatments against diseases and fruit flies, safe storage techniques etc. could bea milestone in increasing quality and shelf-life from a week to two weeks or more than that.