Effect of improved storage unit on the shelf life of tomato

Abstract

This report covers work carried out to develop a portable storage coolant for increasing the shelf life fresh either in at the farm gate or at a marketing centre. The storage structure works on the principles of passive evaporative cooling. In this work, a rectangular wooden storage coolant measuring 1.22 m long, 0.68 m wide and approximately 1.00 m high was evaluated. The cooling unit consisted of a pad and an overhead water trough. The pads which were two rectangular chicken wire frames housed either pieces of charcoal or cover of jute cloth. The latter two served as absorbents for the water dripping from the overhead water tank. The coolant was designed to hold approximately 1718 or 82.5 kg of medium-sized fresh tomatoes to be stored at a given time. The coolant was designed to remove two sources of heat, field and respiratory heats of the amounts 657 kJ and 0.43 kJ, respectively. The coolant is able to achieve an average of 80 to 85% RH and relative lowering of 6ᵒC during its operation. Unfortunately, because of the drought in the Greater Accra Region for much of 1998, it became extremely difficult to come by matured green tomato to carry out the evaluation of part of the study