Use of intermittent warming to control chilling injury in peach during storage

The post-harvest life of peach does not exceed 4 days under ordinary storageconditions. Storage of the fruit under refrigerated conditions could exceed its post-harvest life but the fruit suffers from chilling injury when stored at low temperature for prolonged periods of time. With the aforesaid background under consideration, the present investigation was undertaken with an objective of lowering down the incidence of chilling injury to peach fruit during its refrigerated storage. The fruit was refrigerated under ordinary and modified atmospheric conditions and was warmed intermittently. Intermittent warming (IW) coupled with modified atmospheric storage was found very effective in preventing the chilling injury (CI) and prolonging storage life of fruit. Physiological loss in weight was more (40%) under ordinary conditions as compared to 13% in modified atmospheric conditions. Increase in TSS was also more under ordinary conditions.