Monitoring storage characteristics of gray mold inoculated strawberries treated with limonene liposome and oxygen absorbers and prediction of sensory shelf-life with UV-VIS-NIR reflectance

Abstract

In this research, the effect of grey mold inoculation and subsequent postharvest treatment with limonene-liposomes and oxygen absorbers is observed on the storage characteristics of strawberries. The survival analysis of the end of sensory shelf-life indicated that inoculated strawberries were 9.96 times more likely to be rejected compared to uninoculated strawberries. The inoculation also resulted in lower firmness, higher rate of weight loss, higher CO₂ respiration rates, and higher total polyphenol contents. Among the inoculated strawberries, limonene-liposome treated strawberries had a longer average shelf-life by 1.5 days compared to control inoculated strawberries. Similarly, oxygen absorber treated strawberries had lower respiration rates and lower rate of weight loss. The sequential addition of variables in the multiple linear models fitting days till rejection (DTR) show that up to 52% of the variation in DTR can be explained from days of storage, state of inoculation, firmness, respiration rate and total anthocyanin content. The models built from storage characteristics other than state of inoculation can explain up to 26% of variation in DTR. The partial least square regression (PLSR) models for the prediction of DTR built from two different types of spectral data, UV-VIS and NIR, yielded evaluation R² up to 0.778 and 0.765 respectively.