Effect of Chitosan and CaCl2 on physico-chemical properties and shelf life of Banana in ambient conditions

Banana is one of the most popular sub-tropical fruits in the world. But short shelf life of banana creates difficulties in marketing and preservation. Moreover, at higher ambient storage temperature the ripening of banana fruit is inhibited. For solving these problems, the harvested fruits were treated with different concentrations of chitosan (0.05%-1%), CaCl₂ (0.1%-0.5%) and combination of chitosan (0.05%-0.3%) and CaCl₂ (0.1%-0.5%). Non-treated fruits were considered as control. Both treated and control fruits were stored in ambient conditions (28-32°C) at the Horticulture Laboratory, Agrotechnology Discipline, Khulna University, Khulna. For investigating the postharvest performance during storage, three separate experiments were conducted following factorial Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with three replications of the treatments having 10 fruits in each replication. The banana fruits were observed until rotten and the effectiveness of the treatments in maintaining the physico-chemical properties and shelf life was evaluated by determining cumulative weight loss, color change, firmness, pulp-peel ratio, TA, TSS, disease incidence and disease severity during the storage period. From the study it was observed that, higher concentration of chitosan (0.6%) showed better performance than untreated fruits and also suppressed change in color (0.42-part), firmness (0.42-part), TSS (0.36-part), disease incidence (0.62-part) and disease severity (0.73-part). The longest shelf life (12.25 and 12.08 days) was found with CaCl₂ (0.1%) and CaCl₂ (0.3%) respectively. It also revealed that combined effect of chitosan and CaCl₂ could break the inhibitory effect of higher ambient storage temperature on banana fruit ripening. The combination of lower concentration of chitosan and CaCl₂ enhances the extension of shelf life (about 3-day more than control) and performs better in maintaining the physico-chemical properties of banana in higher ambient storage temperature.

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