Mango Firmness Modeling as Affected by Transport and Ethylene Treatments

Abstract

More and more, tropical fruit are subjected to accelerated ripening at receiving markets until “ready to eat.” We propose a kinetic model that incorporates the effects of temperature and ethylene on the firmness behavior of “Keitt” and “Kent” mangoes. Stiffness of individual mangoes, as measured by the acoustic firmness tester, was measured repeatedly over time. The firmness model assumes fixed levels of ethylene, established after the climacteric peak, that steadily induces production of softening enzymes that subsequently denaturalize. The initial level of these enzymes is assumed to be zero due to either the tree factor for freshly harvested mangoes, or due to chilling injury for reefer transported mangoes. The kinetic parameter set for “Keitt” mangoes was estimated based on a Spanish batch, freshly harvested and ripened under dynamic temperature scenarios, combined with a reefer transported Brazilian batch stored at four constant temperatures. Firmness data from reefer transported batches, from Brazil, Ivory Coast and Mali, stored at four constant temperatures were used to estimate a set of kinetic parameters for the “Kent” mangoes. Only a partial set of “Kent” kinetic parameters could be established due to the often already advanced stage of softening at the time of arrival. The effect of ethylene was investigated by applying external ethylene levels, varying from 0 to 100 μL L−1. The effect of external application of ethylene was modeled by estimating EF, the ethylene factor, being a reflection of the internal ethylene level and ethylene sensitivity. The effect of ethylene application on softening was sometimes huge. For an Israeli “Keitt” batch a fifty times higher EF was found when the firmness behavior of low- (without ethylene application) and high temperature (with ethylene application) stored sub-batches were compared. However, this effect was sometimes also small, especially for reefer transported mangoes. For commercial application, a reliable prediction of the time until “ready to eat” is not possible because of the current inability to assess EF. Nevertheless, the proposed model described mango softening accurately, irrespective of the sourcing area and includes the effects of storage temperature and ethylene application.

Effect of Harvest Date on Mango (Mangifera indica L. Cultivar Osteen) Fruit’s Qualitative Development, Shelf Life and Consumer Acceptance

“…At the consumption point, the fruits showed firmness values below 1.5 kg/cm 2 (Table 2) [33]. The change in this parameter after the fruit was harvested is of utmost importance to define ripening protocols for the fruits themselves, to obtain ready-to-eat products, which have an increasingly stronger demand on the market [34]. Dry Matter (DM) is a very important quality index, as it is linked to the carbohydrate content in the fruit, which are the compounds that have the biggest influence on the typical taste of mango [35].…”

Low Oxygen Storage Improves Tomato Postharvest Cold Tolerance, Especially for Tomatoes Cultivated with Far-Red LED Light

“…Firmness was measured non-destructively using a commercial acoustic firmness tester (AFS, AWETA, Nootdorp, the Netherlands) with the tick power of the plunger set to 15. The AFS combines the single tomato resonant frequency (f in Hz) and mass (m, in kg), measured by an inbuild balance, into a FI (firmness index) [33] (Equation ( 3)).…”

The reefer container market and academic research: A review study

“…-Bananas (Arduino et al, 2015;Jedermann et al, 2013;Jedermann and Lang, 2017;Lin et al, 2017;Snowdon, 2010) -Grapes (De Lima, 2015) -Pineapple (Abdullah et al, 2000;Amador et al, 2009;Chan, 2011; Nor Hanis Aifaa et al, 2011) -Cut flowers (Shelton et al, 1996;Woltering et al, 2018) -Mangos (De Mello Vasconcelos et al, 2019Kienzle et al, 2012;Schouten et al, 2018;Setyawan et al, 2013; Van Der Waal and Zongo, 2011) -Tomatoes (L opez et al, 2003) -Plums (Punt and Huysamer, 2005) -Persimmon (Fahmy and Nakano, 2013) -Papaya (Rohani and Zaipun, 2007) -Apples (Getahun et al, 2017b, 2017a) -Citrus (Defraeye et al, 2015b(Defraeye et al, , 2015aGazit and Kaspi, 2017;Tauriello et al, 2015;Wu et al, 2018) -Kiwi (Bollen et al, 2015;Harvey et al, 1983) Other studies focus on multiple types of fruit from one export market (Goedhals-Gerber et al, 2015;Morris et al, 2003) or of the same category (Goedhals-Gerber et al, 2017;Piala and David, 2016). Some studies also show overlap with the two clusters discussed above, for example reporting on specific experiments with temperature monitoring of shipments of a certain type of cargo.…”