EFFECT OF HYDROCOOLING ON THE SHELF LIFE AND QUALITY OF CELERY (APIUM GRAVEOLENS, L.) DURING STORAGE
Khandra Fahmy and Julhami Yose
Department of Agricultural Engineering, Faculty of Agricultural Technology, Andalas University, Kampus Limau Manis Padang-25163, Indonesia
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ABSTRACT
Fresh fruits and vegetables is a sub-sector of agricultural that gets attentions of the world community, including Indonesia in the last decade. This is not free from public awareness of the benefits for health owing to their nutritional values. However, they are very perishable and deteriorated easily after harvest. Therefore, the appropriate ways of handling and technologies for maintaining freshness of the products are necessary to minimize loss of the yield and to extend the trading area. Celery is a perishable product and deteriorated easily after harvest. The purpose of this study was to investigate the quality of celery by using hydrocooling method in order to reduce quality loss during storage. Celery was packaged in polyethylene film and put into the water at temperature 10°C and 27°C (room temperature). Another samples were also stored without packaging and hydrocooling as control. The weight loss, water content, chlorophyll, water activity and gas concentration change inside package were evaluated during storage. The results show that the weight of celery increased on the product stored with hydrocooling method, while for control product, the weight of product decreased during period of storage. the water content and water activity of celery was higher on the product stored at 10°C compared with room temperature and control. For celery hydrocooled at 10°C suppressed the degradation of chlorophyll compared with hydrocooling at room temperature and control.The gas concentration inside packaging changed drastically on the celery hydrocooled at room temperature and control, while on the celery hydrocooled at 10°C gas concentration changed gradually. Based on our observation, the quality parameter of celery could observed until day 21 on the celery hydrocooling at 10°C. It indicates that hydrocooling of celery at temperature 10°C could extend the shef-life of product compared with room temperature.
Keywords: celery, hydrocooling, quality, shelf life