Effect of Botanical Extracts on Shelf Life and Quality of Papaya (Carica Papaya L.)

Abstract

The study was conducted to develop an appropriate storage method and investigate the pattern of physico-chemical changes and shelf life of Shahi papaya under different storage conditions. The experiment was carried out at the Germplasm Centre, Plant Pathology and Molecular Horticulture Laboratory of the Discipline of Agrotechnology, Khulna University, Khulna during the period from April to May, 2013, to investigate the effect of different postharvest treatments of plant extract on fruit characteristics, physico-chemical changes, disease incidence and severity and shelf life of papaya cv. Shahi. The experiment comprised of six plant extract treatments including control viz., control (T1), onion (T2), neem (T3), garlic (T4), bishkantali (T5), datura (T6) extracts. The single-factor experiment was laid out in completely randomized design (CRD) with three replications. Among the physico-chemical parameters such as TSS, weight loss and dry matter content increases significantly whereas pulp to peel ratio, moisture content decreases during storage in all treated and untreated fruits. There was significant increasing tendency was also obtained in relation to disease incidence and severity. Among the physico-chemical parameters, garlic extract treated fruits of Shahi papaya produced significantly the maximum pulp to peel ratio 3.82. It was also observed that the lowest total soluble solid (11.27%), was in garlic treated fruits. Per cent of total weight loss was lowest in garlic extract treated fruits (36.18%), highest moisture content was in datura extract treated fruits (76.67%). Per cent dry matter content of fruits was higher in bishkantali extract treated fruits (29.67%). Postharvest disease was severe at 10 DAS it was the maximum (100%) in untreated and datura treated fruits where the minimum (59.33%) was in bishkantali treated fruits and it was increase 80% up to 14 DAS. Botanical extracts showed highly significant variation in the shelf life of papaya. On the basis of storage performance, garlic extract resulted in the longest shelf life (15.95 days) and shortest (8.67 days) was recorded in untreated fruits preceded by those kept in neem extract (10.98 days), onion extract (12.82 days), datura extract (13.00 days), and bishkantali extract (14.90 days), respectively.