evaluation of the effect of fruit coating on shelf life extension of lime (citrus aurantifolia) under different storage condition

Purpose: lime fruit, a non-climacteric, seasonal crop, becomesunmarketable after 1-2 weeks from harvesting. even though, lime isstored under low temperature conditions, the shelf life of whichlasted about 4-6 weeks due to low rate of perishability. researchmethod: the study was conducted to evaluate the effect of coatingformulation under ambient (30°c, 65% rh), cold (13±2°c and 85%rh), zero energy cooling chamber [zecc], (16-18°c, 65% rh).thephysiochemical attributes were evaluated in triplicate and datawere analyzed using anova and a probability value of p<0.05 wasadopted. finding: the storage life of citrus fruits was extended up to15, 30, and 40 days under ambient, zecc, and cold storagerespectively by protecting physicochemical attributes such as lowweight loss, tss, titratable acidity, ph, juice yield, chlorophyll (a, band total chlorophyll content) and surface colour with respect to l*,a* and b* values. the overall performance of different treatmentsdemonstrated that the wax coating treatment for lime fruits underlow temperature storage proved better performance comparedwith all other treatments. the coated fruits exhibited the retentionof physicochemical characteristics significantly (p< 0.05) by loweringthe fruit spoilage. research limitations: even though mechanicalapplication of wax formulations was effective; it was not practicedin the experiment. originality/value: the wax coating treatmentcan be utilized on commercial scale to enhance the shelf life and tomaintain the quality of lime fruits combined with low temperaturestorage.