Reducing Sultani Figs Losses During Markeeting by Thymol and Chitosan Dipping

Abstract

The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of chitosan and thymol postharvest dipping on maintaining fruit quality attributes of Sultani figs. Ripe fig fruits gently picked manually and treated with 0.3 or 0.6 mM thymol and 2.5 or 5 g/L chitosan in addition to water treatment then stored at 0°C and 85-90 % RH. A Samples of stored fruits were taken every week to estimate determine fruit quality and storability. The results of the study showed that chitosan treatments significantly reduced fruit weight loss and shriveling percent up to three weeks as compared with the untreated fruit. Thymol and chitosan treatments decreases the percentage of decay incidence and quantitative losses after one, two or three weeks of cold storage plus two days at room temperature especially at the high concentration. All treatments caused a decrease in the percentage of quantitative losses after two or three weeks of storage as compared to control and 0.3 mM thymol. Chitosan significantly maintained fruit firmness, SSC, total and non-reducing sugars up to 3 weeks. In addition, thymol and chitosan treatments had higher phenolic content than control after 1 or two weeks.

An economic study for analyzing the current situation of livestock fodders in Egypt

“…The operating percentage of fodder factories reached 25% as an average period (2003-2020), which indicates the existence of large idle investments in this field and the high fixed costs per ton produced from the processed fodder as mentioned by Ahmed (2) . These finding consistent with what stated by Mostafa and Afifi (19) about the existence of some private fodder factories that import…”

“…It observed from the data in table 11 that the Egyptian imports of the most important fodder components are represented in corn and soybean, where they represent about 26.4% of the total value of the Egyptian agricultural imports in 2020. This result is in line with the finding of Mostafa and Afifi (19) who indicated that Egypt relying on imports to provide concentrated fodder requirements and facing difficulty in obtaining the necessary foreign exchange for importing fodder ingredients such as yellow corn and soybean, and their high prices. The total value of the Egyptian imports of the most important fodder components took an increasing general trend during the study period, where the annual increase amounted to 174 million dollars, representing 8% of the average value of the Egyptian imports of fodder during the same period and the significance of this increase was proved.…”

“…By comparing the fodder needs of livestock in Egypt with the available fodders for consumption, it indicated that there is a shortage estimated at 785 thousand ton of total digested compounds and a surplus of about 348 thousand ton of digested crude protein as shown in table 6. Moreover, it observed that there was a surplus of green fodder estimated at 27.22 million ton, this result agrees with Shata (22) and Mostafa and Afifi (19) . These previous results confirmed the findings of Al-Sharqawi (3) who reported that the issue of the green fodder deficit is not real, and the problem is not in the animal needs of green fodder, but the problem is in the way the animal feeds these fodder in its diet.…”