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1994 - 20002
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Author: KAU × Author: Sunil Kumar, G × End date: 2000 × Start date: 1990 × Type: Thesis × Thesis Type: M.Sc ×
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    ThesisItemOpen Access
    Consumer packaging of selected vegetables
    (Department of Processing Technology, College of Horticulture,Vellanikkara, 1994) Sunil Kumar, G; KAU; Raju, V K
    The present study on “Consumer packaging of selected vegetables” was conducted in the Department of Processing Technology, Kerala Agricultural University, Vellanikkara during June 1992 to October 1993. The study on standardization of precooling treatments to improve the postharvest life of the vegetables viz., amaranth, brinjal, chilli, cowpea, okra and tomato revealed that precooling the vegetables immediately after harvest reduced the physiological loss in weight (PLW) and enhanced the marketability both under ambient and refrigerated storage environments. The effect of precooling treatments was more pronounced when precooling was immediately followed by refrigerated storage. Among precooling treatments, contact icing and cold water treatments were found superior to tap water treatment in most of the cases. The study on precooling and packaging treatments on amaranth, brinjal, chilli, cowpea, okra and tomato revealed that precooling followed by immediate packaging of the vegetables in 100 or 200 gauge polyethylene or polypropylene bags reduced the PLW considerably. Moreover, packaged vegetables had better consumer acceptability and has remained marketable for longer periods both under ambient and refrigerated storage conditions. In most of the cases, contact icing and cold water treatments gave better results among precooling treatments. With respect to packaging, under ambient temperature storage, 100 or 200 gauge polyethylene or polypropylene bags with 0.5 per cent ventilation was found to be ideal except in okra where unventilated polybags was the best. In refrigerated storage for brinjal, chilli and tomato, polybags with 0.5 per cent ventilation was found to be ideal. For amaranth, cowpea and okra polybags without ventilation was found to be more efficient. Refrigerated storage enhanced the shelf life of packaged vegetables 3-4 times as compared to packaged vegetables kept under ambient temperature storage. The storage study on precooled portioned vegetables viz., ashgourd, elephant foot yam, oriental pickling melon, pumpkin and snakegourd packaged in polymeric films revealed that portion packaged vegetables had lower PLW and remained marketable for longer periods both under ambient and refrigerated storage environments. Wilting, shrinkage, shriveling, discolouration and microbial rotting were the common types of spoilage in packaged vegetables. Cost- wise, among precooling treatments, tap water treatment was the cheapest followed by cold water and contact icing. Among polybags polypropylene was cheaper compared to polyethylene.
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    ThesisItemOpen Access
    Optimum stratification for yield estimation in cocoa (Theobroma Cacao L.)
    (Department of Agricultural Statistics, College of Horticulture, Vellanikkara, 2000) Sunil Kumar, G; KAU; Gopinathan Unnithan, V K
    Investigation on "Optimum stratification for yield estimation In cocoa (Theobroma cacao. L)" was carried out in the department of Agricultural Statistics, College of Horticulture, V ellanikkara during 1997-99 using data on 1025 'F orestro' variety cocoa trees from the Cadbury-KAU Co-operative Cocoa Research Project (CCRP), College of Horticulture, Kerala Agricultural University. Four different stratification rules, viz, cumulative root 'f rule, cumulative cube root 'f rule, Ekman's rule and an iterative procedure for function minimisation, were used to arrive at boundary points of strata. For each of these rules stratification was carried out on average yield of yester years, canopy spread, value of HxG2 where 'H' is height and 'G' is the girth of the trees, the first principal component derived from these variates and height and girth of the trees and regression estimate of the study character with the predictor variables mentioned above. Sampling variance of the estimator of the population mean under Neyman allocation for two to five strata situations was estimated in each case, assuming a uniform sample size of 200. Different stratification rules and stratification variables were compared using these estimates. No single rule was found to be appropriate for all the stratification variables and for different number of strata. But in most of the cases the cumulative root 'f rule was found to be good for smaller number of strata followed by the cumulative cube root 'f rule. For large number of strata, the iterative procedure performed consistently well compared to all the other methods. In the case of stratification based on the canopy spread, the Ekman' s method was found to be good for different numbers of strata. Regarding the stratification variables, the average yield of yester years was found to be best followed by the regression estimate in the sense of resulting in smaller sampling variance of the estimator of the population mean. Stratification based on value of HxG2 and the first principal component were found to be inferior. Average yield of yester years or regression estimate of yield could be used as covariate to perform the analysis of covariance for experiments in cocoa and also blocking of trees could be done based on these for the conduct of planned experiments on cocoa.