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Poor post harvest could does effect the quality of texture and flavor of the
fruit. Therefore the management of post harvest is critical for all commercial
farmers.
Dragon fruit is best serve in cold (refrigerated). Some people found that Dragon
Fruit which import from other country are not sweet (plaint) and with awful in tease. However
compare to the local harvest, the quality is good.
In order to increase the shell life of the fruit for export, farmer mostly
pick the fruit early. This is one of the reason why imported fruits are plain,
bland, tasteless and can not compare with local ripe fruit.
Storage Conditions:
Pitaya should be stored at 5șC and 90% relative humidity, and can be stored for
up to 40 days. If the fruit store at higher temperature
than that, the decline of quality is much
quicker.
At 20șC it has a very short life.
It become worse if dragon fruit move in and out in between two relative high and
low temperature. For example is the seller display for 4 to 8 hours a day and
store it back to cold room after business hours, then the shell life of dragon
fruit will be very short.
However, the stored fruit-skins will become thinner, due to water moves from the
skin to the flesh. Remain higher sugar level, but less flavors than freshly
harvested fruit and may develop a watery rot.
Fruit Quality:
People are using BRIX Refractometer to determined the sweetness and
therefore the quality of a fruit. However refractometer is not always accurate.
Some links below should be useful if reader want to pursue it.
1.http://www.plantsfood.com/brixvalue.htm
2.http://www.pikeagri.com/tissue.html
3.http://groups.yahoo.com/group/BrixTalk/ |