The crisis in citrus fruit, can the organic fruit be a reply?
Eliahou Cohen
Proceedings of the APEC symposium on postharvest handling systems Bangkok, Thailand September 1-3, 2003. p. 151
2003
บทคัดย่อ
The crisis in citrus fruit, can the organic fruit be a reply?
Postharvest treatment in citrus fruit is aimed to control pathogens in infected fruit, and to protect sound fruit from infection during handling, storage and shelf-life. The marketing of organic citrus fruit has markedly increased during the last years. Organic fruits are not chemical treated, without chemical residues on the fruit may develop relatively high rates of decay. Therefore, efforts were done first to reduce fungicides dozes in fresh produce. At same time “safer” compounds from various chemical groups were evaluated to replace the synthetic fungicides and application mode were modified: Fertilizer such potassium phosphite was found as effective fungicide. Essential oils showed antifungal effect in in-vitro. And “Aspire”TM as bio-fungicide for the biological control of citrus diseases was evaluated. Among physical control, intermittent warming (IW) a periodical interruption of chilling by exposure the cold storage fruit to warm temperature, reduced or delayed the onset of chilling injury. The method is applied in practice for long term storage of lemon in Israel. Hot water brushing method (HWB) is a technique involves rinsing fruits with hot water as they moving along a set of brush rollers, thus simultaneously cleaning and disinfecting the fruits, and improving their general appearance (Israeli patent 116965). Scanning electron microscopy showed that HWB provided smoothed epicuticular wax on the fruit surface, that covered and sealed stomata and cracks that could have served as potential for pathogen invasion.