Responses of pomegranates to ethylene treatment and storage temperature

Almost all 'the commercial production of pomegranates in the United States is in California. The fruit is large, deep purple-red in color, and glossy in appearance, and the edible portion, the pulp around each seed (aril), is eaten fresh or used in making juice, jelly, grenadine, and wine. Harvesting of the most widely grown cultivar of pomegranate, Punica granatum 'Wonderful', usually begins in the middl ptember and continues unti1 m'd-Oct ber. Currently used indices of 0 um maturity are titratable acidity (less than 1.85 percent acid content) and intensity of red color of the juice. Pomegranates may be stored for several weeks to extend their marketing season, but very little information is available on their postharvest physiology and optimum storage conditions. Our objectives were to investigate responses of pomegranates to ethylene treatments and to storage temperature and duration. During the 1979 to seasons, we obtained fruits of t 'Wonderful' ltivar from a packinghou a indsay, California. We used medium-size (about 230-gram) fruits in all experiments except when investigating the relationship between fruit size and composition. Respiration and ethylene production were measured on five individual fruits (replicates) per treatment. Studies of weight loss, compositional changes, and chilling injury used three replicates of five fruits each per treatment. Quality evaluations included external skin color as well as color, soluble solids content, pH, and titratable acidity of the juice extracted from the arils.