Physio-Chemical Properties of Tomatoes (Lycopersicon esculentum) Stored in Locally Constructed Postharvest Cold Storage House

Abstract

The quality of tomatoes (Lycopersicon esculentum.cv ‘Padma’) stored in a farmer cooling storage innovation in comparison with the ambient and fridge storage conditions were assessed for a period of 28 days. The temperature inside the storage house and that of the ambient environments varied from 23°C to 25°C and 20°C to 29°C, respectively. The relative humidity in the storage house and ambient also ranged from 79% to 87% and 53% to 93%, respectively. The temperature and relative humidity for the fridge were kept constant at 12°C and 90%, respectively. Nutritional composition analysis for the stored tomatoes had a weight loss rate of 8.9, 2.2 and 0.4 for tomatoes stored under the ambient, storage room and fridge conditions, respectively, for a period of 28 days. A significantly higher weight loss for tomatoes stored at ambient conditions was observed compared to tomatoes stored under storage room and fridge storage conditions (P = 0.007). Tomatoes stored under ambient conditions had more decrease in total carbohydrates, ascorbic acid, crude protein, ash content and titratable acidity compared to those stored under fridge and storage room conditions. However, a higher increase of 429 μg RAE/100g in total carotenoid content was observed for tomatoes stored under the storage house conditions, followed by tomatoes under ambient (366 μg RAE/100g) and fridge (141 μg RAE/100g) conditions. The pH range for tomatoes stored from all storage environments varied from 3.8 to 4.4. Therefore, a general decrease of nutritional quality in tomatoes stored under the ambient compared to those stored under storage house and fridge conditions were observed. Furthermore, the storage house preserved tomatoes for extra more 10 days compared to the ambient storage for tomato Padma harvested at green mature stage