Kiran Prasad Upadhayaya¹ , Arati Chapai² , Raju Ranabhat¹ , Binay Maharjan¹ , Rajesh Pant¹ , Sanjeet Basnet¹

1 Institute of Agriculture and Animal Science, Tribhuwan University, Kirtipur, P.O. Box 143, Nepal
2 Agriculture and Forestry University, Rampur, Chitwan, 44209, Nepal
Author    Correspondence author
International Journal of Horticulture, 2024, Vol. 14, No. 1   doi: 10.5376/ijh.2024.14.0005
Received: 21 Feb., 2024    Accepted: 18 Mar., 2024    Published: 03 Apr., 2024

This is an open access article published under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Upadhayaya K.P., Chapai A., Maharjan B., Ranabhat R., Pant R., and Basnet S., 2024, Effect of different postharvest treatments on quality and shelf life of mandarin (Citrus reticulata Blanco) in Gokuleshwor, Baitadi, International Journal of Horticulture, 14(1): 38-43 (doi: 10.5376/ijh.2024.14.0005)

The experiment was carried out from December 2018 to January 2019 with the objective of assessing the effect of different postharvest treatments on the quality and shelf life of mandarin (Citrus reticulata Blanco). The design of the experiment was a Completely Randomized Design (CRD) with five treatments (T1= Control, T2= Calcium chloride 1%, T3= Cinnamomum oil 2%, T4= Bavistin 0.1% and T5= Salt water 1%) and four replications. T3 was found to be the most effective in reducing the physiological loss in weight (18.10%) in comparison with T5 (23.28%) and T1 (22.79%), whereas T4 proved to have minimum decay loss (25%) up to four weeks of storage. The fruits treated with T2 retained maximum firmness (3.96 kg/cm²). The maximum total soluble solid (12.36˚ Brix) was recorded in T5 and the maximum Titrable Acidity was recorded in T3. The present findings indicate that mandarin can be stored for up to four weeks when treated with Cinnamomum as well as with Bavistin in a condition with a temperature of 13 °C-18 °C and a relative humidity of 75%-90%.

Mandarin; Fruit quality; Postharvest treatments; Shelf life; Postharvest loss in weight