STANDARDIZATION OF HANDLING TECHNIQUES OF LITCHI

Litchi fruits (cv. Bombai) were harvested after 60 days of fruit set, immediately brought into the laboratory and precooled (room cooling) at 3°C for 1h. Fruits were sorted out and litchi fruits with 1 cm stalk length were kept under different packaging systems and stored at various temperature regimes (at ambient, 8, and 4°C). Control fruits were kept in corrugated fibre board (CFB) box without any wrapping material. At ambient temperature, most of the fruits packed in CFB box with perforated polypropylene (pp) bag and brown packet remain (93.33%) marketable up to 8 days while fruits in other packaging showed browning and rotting on that day. Under refrigerated (7-8°C) condition the same packaging combination fruits remain acceptable for marketing up to 16 days. At 4°C storage temperature and fruits wrapped in perforated pp bag followed by butter paper, brown paper packet and kept in CFB boxes perform better and helped litchi fruits to remain marketable for 30 days. Thus the above experiment is based on mere packaging and temperature management and no chemical has been used since litchi is such a tricky and sensitive fruit, it hardly can tolerate any chemical treatment after harvesting.