Abstract
‘Kinnow’ mandarin is an important citrus cultivar, which ranks first among all the fruit crops in Pakistan. Being a nonclimacteric fruit, it has low shelflife even in cold storage, may lose its quality because of some physiochemical changes. Wax
coating has been proved as an important strategy to maintain the fruit quality under storage. The present study was planned to
compare the different types of waxes which include commercial waxes used by the traders and lab. prepared coatings (PHRC
wax and benzaldehyde coating) by the scientists of AARI and UAF, respectively. The results revealed that sharine and paraffin
wax exhibited minimum fruit rot (2%) with lower weight loss (11.87%) after 90 days of storage and PHRC wax performed
statistically at par to commercial waxes regarding weight loss (12%) and fruit rot (3%). The minimum changes in juice weight,
TSS/TA ratio, peel/pulp ratio, ascorbic acid and sugar contents were recorded in coated fruits except benzaldehyde coating.
Wax coatings also maintained higher levels of total phenolics (240.7 mg GAE 100g-1
), antioxidant (63.4%) and enzyme
activities of catalase (17.6), peroxidase (0.71), and superoxide dismutase (137.6 U mg-1 protein) during storage. It is concluded
that PHRC wax can be recommended for long term storage of citrus fruits as it performed almost at par to commercial waxes
and maintained the fruit quality as well as bioactive juice components.
