Storage Behaviour of Apple Cultivars under Ambient Conditions

An experiment was conducted at ICAR-CITH, Regional Station, Mukteshwar, Nainital, Uttarakhand in ten apple cultivars to assess the physico-chemical changes and shelf-life at ambient storage conditions for 49 days. The physiological loss in weight, TSS, reducing sugars, total sugars, non-reducing sugars and fruit decay percentage increased, while fruit firmness, titratable acidity, ascorbic acid content and organoleptic score decreased during storage in all cultivars. Cultivar Skyline Supreme exhibited lowest physiological loss in weight (7.77%), highest TSS (14.93 degrees B) and organoleptic score (7.19) than other apple cultivars. However, the cv. Red Chief exhibited highest ascorbic acid (12.32 mg/100 g), reducing sugars (8.89%) and total sugars (10.59%) and the cv. Bright-N-Early exhibited highest fruit firmness (8.18 lb/in(2)) and lowest fruit decay (5.05%) than other apple cultivars. Conclusively, Skyline Supreme, Red Chief and Bright-N-Early have better shelf-life than other apple cultivars under ambient storage conditions.