Potassium permanganate effects on postharvest conversation of Turning Tomato (Var. Rio Grande) fruits

Tomato is an economic fruit crop widely cultivated commercially throughout the world due to its unique bioactive components. Being climacteric in nature, tomato fruit has a limited storage life after harvest. Potassium permanganate has been accepted for commercial purposes in maintaining the quality attributes of fruits. In the present investigation an attempt was made to determine the effect of different levels of KMnO 4 on the quality attributes of turning tomatoes placed in cardboard and stored at ambient temperature. Sorted turning tomato fruits (n=9) were placed with sponge cuttings dipped in 5, 10 and 15% KMnO 4 ­in cardboard boxes these fruits were assessed for their quality attributes at 10 days interval. These parameters includes weight loss, firmness, total soluble solid, dry matter, titratable acidity, ripening index, respiration rate, ascorbic acid, lycopene, β-carotene, total phenolic and antioxidant activity. Significant difference (pu003c0.05) among different concentrations of KMnO 4 was observed on these quality variables as compared with control. In general, 15% KMnO 4 showed promising results with reference to lowest weight loss, titratable acidity and respiration rate while firmness, ripening index and all biochemical constituents were the highest. It was further observed that comparatively lower loss of different bioactive components was observed in all the testedtreatments as compared to control. Overall results showed that the post harvest application of 15% KMnO 4 using sponge cuttings on tomato fruits harvested at turning stage retained fruit quality and bioactive components along with the extended storage life i up to 50 days at ambient temperature.