Pg. 25-30 Development and Refinement of Litchi Postharvest Treatments

A number of trials aimed at developing new litchi postharvest storage treatments were conducted during the last season. In the most important of these, dip treatments with “acid A” and “acid B” were evaluated. The “acid A” trial was conducted with HLH Mauritius while the “acid B” trial was done with both HLH Mauritius and McLean’s Red fruit. Overall, “acid B” showed considerable promise in that the fruit were firm with a freshly picked appearance after 25 days of cold storage. Sensory analysis revealed the tasting panel to prefer the “acid B” treatment to the standard SO₂ treatment. However, certain panellists recorded a slight “sharpness on the tongue”. As with all previous methods, this treatment was found to be damaging to the aril of McLean’s Red fruit. On the whole, we consider this method to be the most promising alternative to sulphur fumigation of HLH Mauritius and further experimentation is definitely justified. In addition to the above trials, detailed experiments were conducted to upgrade and refine the presently used sulphur fumigation/HCI dip regime. The use of controlled atmosphere was also further pursued and good experimental and semi-commercial results were attained with this technique.