Effects of forced air precooling and MA film packaging on quality characteristics of ‘Fuji’ apples

This study was carried out to find a method of pretreatment before storage to improve the shelf life of apples. Fuji apple was pretreated with forced air precooling and pretreated with neutral water and packed in a functional MA film and stored for 18 weeks at 0°C to investigate changes in quality such as weight, hardness, decay rate, titratable acidity and vitamin C. The weight loss of apple packed functional MA film was higher than that of control, weight loss of control was 6.3% and that of functional MA films were 0.3-0.9%. The change of hardness and titratable acidity was also lower than that of control. The decay ratio of apple packed with functional MA films were 1.7-1.4% but that of control was 5.3%, the decay ratio of control was higher than those of functional MA film. Vitamin C also showed little change in MA film packaging after pretreatment. Therefore, when the apple is stored for a long period, it is effective to maintain quality of Fuji apple by forced air precooling method or precooling to low temperature with neutral water and storage in MA film packaging.