EFFECT OF ETHREL ON POST HARVEST CHANGES IN PAPAYA (Carica papaya L.) FRUITS

The present experiment entitled, "Studies on the effect of ethrel on post harvest changes in papaya (Carica papaya L.) fruits was carried out to investigate the effect of ethrel on bio-chemical changes occurred during its post harvest life. The objective of this work was to evaluate the effects of various concentrations of Ethrel (500 ppm, 750 ppm, 1000 ppm and 1500 ppm) on shelf life of papaya fruits when stored under ambient conditions. The treated fruits were assessed for physiological changes such as percentage of ripening, loss of fruit weight (kg), biochemical aspects such as TSS (°Brix), titratable acidity (%), total sugars (%), reducing sugar (%), ascorbic acid content (mg/100 g), total carotenoids (mg/100 g) along with organoleptic evaluation. The observations were recorded at 3, 6 and 9 days after storage and the experiment was laid down using Completely Randomized Design. From the experiment it was clear that the overall performance of the above characteristics was found the best when the fruits were treated with 1500 ppm ethrel followed by 1000 ppm ethre