Effect of individual cluster wrapping on colour development and fruit quality of flame seedless grapes (Vitis vinifera L.) Himatkhwah Rahimullah1*, Arora N K1, Gill K S1, Kaur Nirmaljit2 1Department of Fruit Science, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana-141004, Punjab 2Department of Botany, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana-141004, Punjab *Corresponding author: rahimh21@gmail.com
Online published on 3 June, 2021. Abstract An experiment was conducted to ascertain the effect of individual fruit wrapping on fruit quality and colour development of Flame Seedless variety of grapes during 2018–19 fruiting seasons. Uniform size clusters of Flame Seedless were bagged with white colour and red colour non-woven bags, butter paper bags and LDPE sheets at 40 per cent colour break stage during first of June. At time of attaining full colour, fruits were harvested from all the replication during morning hours and taken for analysis. The significantly lowest uneven berries colour per cluster (18%), maximum cluster weight (366.6 g), cluster and berry size (length and breadth) were recorded in clusters covered with white coloured non-woven bags. Likewise, significantly higher total soluble solids (18.5), total sugars (17.4), total anthocyanin contents (38.95 mg) and lowest value of acidity (0.48%) were found in clusters wrapped with white coloured non-woven bags followed by clusters wrapped with LDPE sheet. As fruit ripening time coincides with early monsoon in Punjab, butter paper bag was completely damaged by rain, while in case of LDPE Sheet there was high percentage of spoilage of clusters due to trapping of rain water. The present studies suggested that wrapping grape clusters with white coloured non-woven bag at colour break stage was helpful for development of uniform colour with improved quality of Flame Seedless grapes. Top Keywords Colour development, Flame Seedless, Grapes, Quality improvement. Top |