ABSTRACT
The current research was carried out to test the effects of edible coatings (EC) enriched with laurel essential oil (EC+LEO) on the storability of strawberry ‘Camarosa’ fruits. Freshly harvested strawberry fruits were randomly separated into three groups and each group was treated with a different treatment, including EC, EC+LEO and control. Fruits were stored at 4.0 ± 1.0 °C and a relative humidity of 90–95% for 15 days. Results suggested that both EC and EC+LEO have positive effects of the quality parameters of strawberry fruits and help to improve the storage duration of the fruits. After 15 days of storage, the average weight loss of the control fruits reached to 12.44%, but was kept at 9.06% and 7.13% at the EC and EC+LEO treated fruits, respectively. Both the EC and EC+LEO treatments were found to have positive impact on the prevention of disease severity and chemical spoilage and lowering respiration rate of the fruits. The loss in the fruit firmness, soluble solids concentration, ascorbic acid content and titratable acidity of the fruits were also found to delay in the coated fruits. The EC+LEO treatment was found to have better performance than the EC treatment. Overall results recommended that the edible coatings enriched with laurel essential oil improve the storability of strawberry fruits and have possibility to be used in postharvest industry.
Key words
edible coatings; laurel essential oil; disease severity; fruit storability; weight loss
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Note. The marker points represent the mean of three replications with six fruits in each replication. The presence of the same letter or letters on the right side of the mean values on the same measurement day indicates that there is no significant difference between these values according to the Tukey’s honestly significant difference test at 5% significance level. Source: Elaborated by the authors.