Qualidade de frutos de tomate Santa Cruz em função de diferentes condições de armazenagem e pré-tratamentos

Abstract

Being a relatively short cycle culture, high yields and with good economic prospects, the tomato production has increased significantly, becoming a crop of great economic importance, which can be consumed au naturelle or in the form of processed products. Because of importance of the tomato as food, the high price of this product in the market, and especially the high number of post-harvest losses, to aimed to with this study was to evaluate the quality of tomato fruits under different storage conditions, including packaging, cooling and pre-treatment with essential oils. The design was randomized blocks in factorial scheme 2x3x3, being: two storage rooms (refrigerated and non-refrigerated); two types of packaging (poliestileno bags and styrofoam tray + plastic film) and three pre-treatment (cinnamon essential oil, essential oil of cloves and without essential oil). The loss of weight and the variation of total soluble solids at the end the conservation period (nine days) was quantified. There was fresh mass loss variation between treatments. According to the experimental conditions, the most appropriate environment for the storage of tomato fruits wascooled. Tomatoes packed in polyethylene bags showed lower weight losses when stored refrigerated. Smaller weight losses were also observed for fruit submitted to immersion in a solution containing essential oils. No storage condition or packaging exerted influence on the total soluble solids content of tomato fruits.