Development of Wholesale Packaging to Prevent Post-Harvest Damage to Rose Apples

The purpose of this research was to determine post-har­ vest damage to rose apples due to transportation hazards and to com­ paratively evaluate the performance of the current and proposed wholesale packaging for the fruit. The methodology comprised of sampling and conducting damage analysis of rose apples of two vari­ eties (Thongsamsri and Toonklao) distributed using commercial packaging to various retailers and wholesalers selected at random around the Bangkok metropolitan areas. Three kinds of current wholesale packaging were packed with newly harvested, dam­ age-free, and uniform sized Thongsamsri rose apples and tested us­ ing a vibration simulator. The same testing was performed for the two types of proposed wholesale packaging. Performance of both types of packaging was evaluated in terms of damage parameters. Results showed that the post-harvest damage was mainly in the form of bruis­ ing and abrasion. The average fruit damage and the average damage percentage of abrasion were higher than that of bruising at both the wholesaler and retailer levels. The average fruit damage and the aver­ age damage percentages at the retailer were greater than that at the wholesaler for both varieties. Majority of the damage seen in the cur­ rent packaging was a combination of bruising and abrasion. The pro­ posed packaging uses diagonally horizontal fruit orientation which imparts a minimum bruising with negligible abrasion. *Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. Journal of Applied Packaging Research, Vol. 2, No.1-September 2007 27 1557-7244/07/01 027-18 © 2007 DEStech Publications, Inc. 28 B. JARIMOPAS, at al.