Post Harvest Management of Banana: Precooling and Storage

Proper post harvest management of any perishable maximizes its shelflife. Precooling and storage are two major areas, which can contribute to a great extent in increasing the shelflife of banana. An attempt has been made to find out ideal package of post harvest handling of banana which maximizes its shelflife. Different precooling treatments(forced air cooling, hydro-cooling, dipping each at 5,8,10 deg.C), wax and control treatments were tried. Three storage environments viz. ambient condition (30 3 deg.C), zero energy cool chamber (25 10 deg.C at 90 95 % RH), and cold storage (13.5 0.5 deg.C, at 85-90 % RH) were evaluated. Results clearly shown that wax treatment was better for banana aimed at room storage as well as evaporative storage and was at par with precooling treatments for banana aimed at cold storage. However, deciding factor is cost of waxing or precooling v/s shelflife extension benefits in case of different combinations of precooling methods, waxing and storage methods. Shelflife advantage of 3 to 5 days can be obtained in different precooling and storage combinations.