Reducing Fruit Quality Losses in Peach Fruits and Increasing Profitability during postharvest Storage Using Salicylic Acid and Aspirin

(Received 24/10/2021, accepted 12/01/2022) DOI: 10.21608/ejoh.2021.102605.1189 ©2021 National Information and Documentation Centre (NIDOC) PEACHES is one of the favorite fruit, but these fruits are sensitive through postharvest handling and it has a great loss in the crop and the fruit quality through its approach to the consumers. In the study, Salicylic acid (SA) and aspirin (AS) drugs have been used to reduce fruit losses and preserve quality of the fruit. In the current study, peach fruit cv. Tropical Snow was treated with: water (control treatment), two concentrations of aspirin as 0.5 and 1 mM and two concentrations of salicylic acid as 0.5 and 1 mM under two storage conditions (23±1 °C, 85 % ± 5 % RH and 1 °C, 85 % ± 5 % %RH) during two seasons (2020 and 2021). The results indicated that the fruit under room temperature conditions at all treatments could not be stored for more than 3 weeks while fruit under cold storage continued to 9 weeks with acceptable fruit quality. Under the room temperature, treatments did not significantly affect the firmness while SA and AS with high concentrations delayed the reduction in acidity and vitamin C and the increase of SSC and SSC/ Acid ratio. Under cold storage, SA treatments followed by AS treatments significantly preserved fruit quality via reducing weight loss, saving firmness , delaying the decline of acidity and vitamin C and the increase of SSC, SSC/ Acid ratio and antioxidant enzymes activity especially in the last 3 weeks. AS or SA resulted in improving the income by 156.5 US$/ton on the room temperature storage and by 761.5 US$/ton on cold storage conditions.