Manejo da umidade relativa do ar durante o armazenamento e sua relação com o amadurecimento e distúrbios fisiológicos em frutas

Abstract

Many factors influence the occurrence of physiological disorders in stored fruits, the relative humidity (RH) is one of the main. The low RH dehydrates the fruits and the high one can cause physiological disorders. Thus to improve the determination and the control of humidity during storage, experiments were conducted on apples, peaches, grapes, guava and Murcott aiming at: quantifying the appropriate level of mass loss for the best quality post storage of these fruits; quantifying the mass loss of apples, peaches and other fruits due to the relative humidity in which they were exposed. According to the results, in Royal Gala apples, the induction of 4% of mass loss in 30 days (initial) or throughout the storage period (linear) prevents the occurrence of physiological disorders. In 'Fuji' apples, the development of breakdown and pulp crack occurs most frequently when the fruits are stored in high relative humidity, higher than 95%. In 'Eragil' peaches, stored for 21 days at 0.5 °C, having 4, 5, 6 and 7% of mass loss, it was verified that the increase in mass loss leads to an increase in pulp firmness, woolliness and reduction in juiciness. Furthermore, in the storage conditions used when executing the experiment, the intensity of daily mass loss of species is increasing in the following order: apple, grape, Murcott, guava and peach.