Influence of edible coating on quality characteristics and post-harvest storage life of sapota (Achras sapota L.)

Sapota (Achars sapota), an important fruit of South East Asia has tremendous potential nutritionally but has limited scope for marketing and commercial success because of its limited shelf life. In ambient conditions the storage life of sapota is 3–4 days and experiments to increase the shelf life in sapota fruit till now are very limited. In the recent years edible coatings have served as very suitable and safe alternative to waxing and chemical treatments. regarding this an attempt was made to conduct experiments to “Study the impact of sodium alginate and guar gum on quality and post-harvest storage life of sapota cv. Kalipatti”.Fruits harvested at commercial maturity stage were immersed in different edible coating of Sodium alginate and Guar gum for 5 minutes and stored at ambient condition up to 7 days. Physical chemical properties of fruits including firmness, weight loss, total soluble solids (tSS), total sugars, reducing sugars and organoleptic evaluation were conducted on daily basis till the end of storage period. Best results were recorded from sapota treated with Sodium alginate 3% + cacl₂ (2%) in terms of fruit quality tSS (^oB), total sugar, reducing sugars among all treatments. Sodium alginate had the least physiological loss in weight with excellent firmness, texture and biochemical properties. Moreover the lowest percentage of tSS, reducing sugars was recorded in the same treatment during the period of the experiment. the second-best treatment was Guar gum 2% which also resulted in retaining the fruit quality followed by Guar gum 1.5% but these treatments were significantly different from each other. Among combination treatments the best treatment was sodium alginate 3% + 2% cacl₂ and guar gum 2% + 0.4% Glycerol in enhancing the shelf life, maintaining quality and physicochemical characteristics of sapota fruit.