Effect of Packaging Type and Perforation Rate on Storability and Quality of Common Beans Pods: - A- Physical Properties

Abstract

Common bean (Phaseolus vulgaris L.) is one of the most important members of leguminous crops grown in Egypt for either local consumption or exportation. For highly respiring produce such as mushrooms, peas and broccoli, traditional films like LDPE. However, the micro-perforated films are special films which are expensive and not available everywhere. This experiment was carried out at Fruit Handling Department laboratories, Horticultural Research Institute. Snap bean pods were obtained from a private farm at Giza, at suitable maturity stage of marketing. Uniform pods and free from blemishes were selected for storage experiment. Pods were packed in perforated or non-perforated polyethylene and polypropylene bags (30 μm thickness, 15 × 25 cm size) and each bag had 250 g as one replicate. There were two perforation rates in addition normal perforation rate. All treatments were stored at 7°C and 90 -95 % relative humidity for 7, 14, 21days. Pods physical properties were recorded during storage.A significant decrease in weight loss percentage was observed in all perforated and nonperforated treatments in comparison with normal perforation rate. The highest weight loss was associated with those stored in normal perforation rate compared with all the other treatments. While the lowest weight loss was associated with those stored in nonperforated treatment in comparison with all other treatments. On the other side, reducing perforation rate significantly reduced decay incidence of stored common beans compared with non-perforated and normal perforated bags. Common beans stored in the less perforation rate bags was associated with the less decay incidence during storage. However, there was no significant differences among these treatments. Also, these treatments significantly reduced deterioration rate in all other studied quality of common beans during storage. Moreover, it is clear that, although common bean pods packaged in polyethylene bags had quality parameter higher than those packaged in polypropylene bags during the two seasons, there was no significant differences among these treatments in these aspects. We can conclude that, reducing bag perforation rate well led to improve common beans storability and reduce its deterioration rate during storage.