Title: Effect of polythene color & types on the quality and shelf life of tomato at ambient condition

Biography:

Md. Kawser Ali has completed his PhD at the age of 40 from University of Rajshahi, Bangladesh. He has been a Scientific Officer, Spices Research station at Magura, Bangladesh Agricultural Research Institute. He has published more than 28 papers in reputed journals and has been serving as a Professor in the Department of Crop Science and Technology, University of Rajshahi, Bangladesh. He is specialized on vegetable and spices research.  He has supervised more than 10 MS and 6 PhD students and at present 6 MS student, 5 PhD students are working under his supervision.

Abstract

An experiment was conducted at Natore district in Bangladesh during from March to April 2013 to study the effect of polythene bags on shelf life of tomato. Significant variation was found due to the combined effects of different color and types of polythene bags at room temperature (25ËšC) in respect of time required for ripening of tomato and percent of weight loss. Control treatment gave the sign of full ripening after 9.67 days where as black sealed treatment took 12.00 days. Control treatment showed the highest weight loss (19.41%) where as it was the lowest (8.9%) in black sealed polythene. There were non-significant variations found in total soluble solids (TSS), acidity and pH. Significant variation among the treatments resulted from the combination of color and types of polythene in respect of moisture content, percent of dry matter and shelf life. The highest moisture content (94.13%) was recorded in black sealed polythene and the minimum moisture content (82.87%) in white and transparent with perforated polythene. White and non transparent polythene with sealed condition showed the highest dry matter content (17.13%) whereas the lowest dry matter was in black sealed (5.87%). The highest shelf life (28.89 days) was recorded in black perforated polythene and the lowest shelf life (14.33 days) in control.