Preharvest Spraying of Calcium Chloride, Chitosan, and their Combination Effects on Tomato Growth, Yield, Fruit Characteristics, and Quality | ||
| Assiut Journal of Agricultural Sciences | ||
| Volume 56, Issue 1, January 2025, Pages 296-313 PDF (603.52 K) | ||
| Document Type: Research papers | ||
| DOI: 10.21608/ajas.2025.330403.1417 | ||
| Authors | ||
| Hasnaa M. Abdelaleem; Mohamed H.Z. EL-Dkeshy; Reham M. Abdalla* | ||
| Vegetable Crops Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Assiut University Assiut, Egypt. | ||
| Abstract | ||
| Postharvest losses are a great obstacle that reduces tomato production in many developing countries, including Egypt. Research was carried out to evaluate the effects of pre-harvest treatments on growth, fruit yield, quality, and fruit characteristics of tomato; variety ‘Nora 765’. The experiment comprised four spraying treatments, viz., control (without spraying), calcium chloride (CaCl2 1.5%), chitosan 1.5%, and a combination of chitosan 1.5% + CaCl2 1.5%, sprayed either foliar (F) or at Green Mature Fruits stage (GM). Foliar spraying with CaCl2 gave the tallest plants and the widest stems. Also, CaCl2 treated plants sprayed at either F or GM had higher fruit numbers than most of the treatments. Spraying the foliage with CaCl2 gave significantly the highest fruit yield in the experiments and showed a lower fruit weight loss than the control in most of the days. In the first season only, plants’ foliar sprayed with CaCl2, chitosan, and mix treatments had better visual appearance and hardness than control fruits after 12 days of storage. Foliar spraying with chitosan had lower microbial fungi than the control. Flavonoids, and total phenolic contents were higher in all GM spraying treatments than the control. However, lycopene was lower in all foliar sprayed treatments than the control. It could be concluded that, under these experimental conditions, CaCl2 was the best treatment for tomato growth and yield and for improving fruit visual appearance, firmness, and delaying skin color development, while foliar chitosan can be used for better postharvest fruit characteristics only. | ||
| Keywords | ||
| Firmness; Fruit visual appearance; Fruit weight loss; Lycopene; Microbial infection | ||
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