Improving quality and reducing losses in specialty fruit crops
Project Overview
Improving quality and reducing losses in specialty fruit crops through storage technologies
This research identified harvest and storage strategies for apples, in particular Gala and Honeycrisp, to improve fruit quality, extend storage life and minimize food waste. The strategies and the predicion tool devised by this project help growers to better control some of the most problematic disorders and minimize losses.
In this project, we seek preharvest and postharvest solutions to problems that affect apples, especially Gala – the number one apple variety in the US, by volume – and Honeycrisp – the third-most popular variety. Our goal is to identify optimal harvest maturity and storage conditions to minimize food waste, reduce economic losses to growers, and improve fruit quality for the consumer.
In Gala apples, the most problematic disorder is flesh browning. We have explored multiple strategies to address the disorder, including: optimizing use of plant growth regulators (PGRs), chemicals that many farmers use to manage fruit maturation and harvest timing; variations in storage temperatures; and use of a new technology, dynamic controlled atmosphere (DCA) storage, which measures fruit responses to low oxygen and allows storage of fruit at oxygen levels previously consider damaging to the fruit. Honeycrisp apples are most susceptible to a low-temperature disorder, soft scald, and a low-calcium-related disorder, bitter pit. In collaboration with partners in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Maine, Washington, and Ontario, we spent two years testing a method devised at Cornell to predict development of bitter pit over two seasons. Previous Cornell work found that conditioning fruits at 50 F for seven days before storing them at 38 F reduced or eliminated soft scald, but increased susceptibility to bitter pit. We sought to predict the risk of bitter pit development so growers can make the most economical decisions about how and when to market their harvests.
The Impacts
For Gala apples, we found that the following strategies reduce flesh browning: applying the plant growth regulators (PGRs) ReTain or Harvista; raising storage temperatures from 33 F to 38 F and treating fruits with 1-methylcyclopropene; and storing fruit at 50 F for one week before longer-term storage at lower temperatures. DCA storage, in combination with PGRs and slightly warmer storage temperatures, eliminated flesh browning in fruit from most orchard blocks. For Honeycrisp, we found that growers can predict the likelihood of their apples developing bitter pit in storage by harvesting test fruit samples three weeks before the start of the full commercial harvest and storing them at room temperature to see if bitter pit develops. In New York and most of the states and provinces tested, we found very good correlations between predicted bitter pit incidence with that found in fruit after normal storage, thereby allowing growers and storage operators to make appropriate marketing decisions.
The harvest and storage strategies we’ve tested, and the prediction tool we devised, can help growers make better management decisions for their harvests. These improvements benefit growers and consumers by reducing food loss and enhancing eating quality.
Principal Investigator
Project Details
- Funding Source: Hatch-Multistate
- Statement Year: 2023
- Status: Completed Project
- Topics: Apples, nutrient management, disease management, storage technologies