Comparison of the Effect of 1-MCP and Low-Pressure Air on Shelflife of Strawberry Fruit (Fragaria ananassa cv. Camarossa)

Strawberry (Fragaria×ananassa) has tasteful, fragrant and nutritious fruits. But, because of delicate texture and high metabolic activities of the fruits at maturity, are very sensitive and easily decayed, and thus have short shelflife. Ethylene is one of the main causes of postharvest fruit losses, which could reduce the shelflife of strawberry. Therefore, an experiment was carried out to examine the effect of 1 µL/L 1-MCP treatment and low-pressure air pretreatment at 0.2 atm in 2 hours on apparent and physicochemical characteristics of strawberry fruit, cultivar Camarossa, during storage in cold store. The study was performed as split plots in time, based on complete randomized design with 3 replications. The results showed that the highest marketability (90%), fruit firmness (7.95 N), titrable organic acids (1.15 g/100 cc), vitamin C (78.13 mg/100 cc) and total soluble solids (10.48 %) and the lowest amount of apparent decay (13.3 %), acidity (3.63) and taste index (9.04) were obtained in 1-MCP and low-pressure air treatments, which shows the effect of treatments on reducing the rate of biochemical variations in fruit texture. Correlation coefficients between all treatments were significant (P≤0.01). Meanwhile, the positive effect of 1-MCP on appearance and studied physicochemical characteristics was more than low-pressure air pretreatment. Even, the combination of these two treatments had no significant difference with 1-MCp treatment alone. In general, this observation depicts the more positive and significant effect of 1-MCP treatment in delaying the maturity and improving the qualitative traits of strawberry fruits after being stored in cold storage.