The Investigation of the Effect of 1-MCP and NO Before- and Post-harvest on Maintaining Quality and Extending Storability of Fresh Pistachio

In order to investigate the effect of methyl cyclopropane (1-MCP) and nitric oxide (NO) on extending storability pistachio, an experiment was conducted as a factorial experiment in a completely randomized design with two factors and four replications. The first factor included treatment application time at three levels (twenty days before harvest, immediately after harvest, before and after harvest) and the second factor included methyl cyclopropane and nitric oxide treatment (1 and 5 (µmol/L), respectively). The results showed that application of methyl cyclopropane in before and after fruit harvesting time cause 20% decreases in fruit weight loss in compare to control. Also the results show that the treatment of methyl cyclopropane and nitric oxide prevents the increase of fruit acidity during storage time. The treatment of methyl cyclopropane increased fruit firmness in compare to control and NO, 48 and 12% respectively. However, experiment show that before and after harvest, the firmness of the fruit increased by 14% compared to the pre-harvest treatment. The results suggested that methyl cyclopropane treatment increased fruit firmness compared to control and nitric oxide treatment, so that methyl cyclopropane treatment increased fruit firmness 48% compared to control and 12% compared to nitric oxide. The results revealed that the amount of soluble carbohydrates in methyl cyclopropane treatment showed a 20% increase compared to the control. Also, carbohydrates in nitric oxide treatment showed a 16% increase compared to the control. The application of nitric oxide treatment before and after harvesting the total phenol at the end of storage was 30% higher than the control. In general, the results show that the application of 1-MCP before and after harvest maintains fruit firmness, soluble carbohydrates and also prevents the increase of acidity and weight loss of fruit.