Vol. 1, Issue 1, Part A (2019)

Custard apple (Annona squamosa L.) is one of the finest Tropical American fruit gifts to India, which belongs to the family Annonaceae. Custard apple are climacteric and have a very short storage life because of their rapid maturation after harvest. Under ordinary condition fruits can keep well only for 3-4 days after harvest. The physiological changes in the fruit occurs continuously after harvest. By reducing these changes, we can effectively increase shelf-life of mature fruits. Extending of shelf life may be possible by checking the transpiration rate, respiration rate and infection with microbes. The softening and reduction of firmness of the fruits are the main reasons for the reduction in quality and developing a major drawback to export market for this fruit. In order to increase the shelf-life of custard apple fruits an investigation was conducted at Horticulture Processing Laboratory, Department of fruit science, College of Agriculture, IGKV, Raipur during the year 2019-20 to study the effect of wax coating treatment son shelf life and physico-chemical composition of custard apple. The experiment was conducted in Completely Randomized Design (CRD) consisting ten different concentration of paraffin wax emulsion along with polythene wrap and KMnO4replicated thrice. The overall best result is observed by treatment T8 in all the physical parameters. Minimum physiological loss in weight (3.23, 6.33, 11.22, 15.33%) and minimum retention of unmarketable fruits (0, 0, 2.76, 19.45%), maximum retention of marketable fruits (100, 100,97.24, 80.55%) and marketable fruit retention over control (8.34, 33.12, 72.24, 80.55%) were observed under the superiority of treatment 10% paraffin wax emulsion coated fruits with wrapping polythene and KMnO4 (0.1%) during storage period.