1Assistant Professor (Agril. Engg.), Institute of Agriculture, Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, West Bengal, India
2Associate Professor (Agril. Engg.), Institute of Agriculture, Visva-Bharati University, Santiniketan, West Bengal, India
3Professor and Head, Department of Postharvest Engineering, Faculty of Agricultural Engineering, Bidhan Chandra Krishi Visvavidhyalaya, Mohanpur, West Bengal, India
Online published on 21 November, 2017.
Experiments were conducted to determine the respiration rate of tomato at 10, 20 and 30°C using closed respiration system. Oxygen depletion and carbon dioxide accumulation in the system containing tomato was monitored. Respiration rate was found to decrease with increasing CO2 and decreasing O2 concentration. Michaelis-Menten type model based on enzyme kinetics was evaluated using experimental data generated for predicting the respiration rate. The model parameters that obtained from the respiration rate at different O2 and CO2 concentration levels were used to fit the model against the storage temperatures. The fitting was fair (R2 = 0.923 to 0.970) when the respiration rate was expressed as O2 concentation. Since inhibition constant for CO2 concentration tended towards negetive, the model was modified as a function of O2 concentration only. The modified model was fitted to the experimental data and showed good agreement (R2 = 0.998) with experimentally estimated respiration rate.
Tomato, temperature, oxygen, carbon dioxide, respiration, modeling
