Postharvest Performance Evaluation of Strawberry Varieties at Ambient Condition

Abstract

Though strawberry is an attractive and nutritious fruit, it perishes quickly at postharvest leading to high postharvest loss. The objective of the experiment was to evaluate the postharvest quality attributes of three strawberry varieties—RABI-3, BARI Strawberry-3, and Festival—at ambient conditions. The experiment was conducted from 30 March to 12 April 2021 at the Horticulture Laboratory of Agrotechnology Discipline, Khulna University, Bangladesh following a Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with three replications.  Each replication consisted of 25 (≈ 500 g) freshly harvested strawberry fruits, which was evaluated for physical (diameter, firmness, and weight loss) and chemical (TSS, TA, pH, vitamin C, anthocyanin, and total carbohydrates) attributes along with the shelf life. Among three varieties of strawberries, Festival measured the highest polar diameter (4.48 cm) and fruit firmness (17.35 N). This variety also had the highest total soluble solids (8.86 %), titratable acidity (0.68%), and ascorbic acid (44.25 mg100g-1). Moreover, the variety Festival resulted in the lowest fruit weight loss (16.63 %) and spoilage (18.36%) compared to RABI-3 and BARI Strawberry-3 at storage. The shelf life of this variety was the highest (8.55 days) among the studied strawberries. Considering other quality attributes like anthocyanin content and equatorial diameter, Festival also was a good variety. Therefore, the Festival is the best among the studied varieties. However, more experiments are suggested to validate the findings.