Gill, P P SSinha, Aeshna2022-10-162022-10-162022Sinha, Aeshna (2022). Improvement in storage life of pear fruit with edible coatings loaded with salicylic acid (Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation). Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana, Punjab, India.https://krishikosh.egranth.ac.in/handle/1/5810188995The present investigations entitled „Improvement in storage life of pear fruit with edible coatings loaded with salicylic acid‟ were conducted in the Department of Fruit Science, Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana during 2019 and 2020. In experiment I-fruit were applied with composite coatings of chitosan (CH) + salicylic acid (SA) and beeswax (BW) + salicylic acid (SA) and individual CH, BW and SA treatments at different concentrations and stored under cold temperature conditions (0-1 ºC and 90-95% RH) for 67 days. In experiment II-similar treatments were given as in experiment I and fruit were stored under supermarket storage conditions (20-22ºC and 80-85% RH) for 20 days. Both treated and untreated fruit were analyzed for different physico-chemical attributes and enzymatic assays on 30th, 45th, 60th, and 67th day for cold stored fruit, while the sampling for fruit stored under supermarket conditions were done on 5th, 10th, 15th, and 20th day of storage. The experiment was laid out in CRD (Factorial). It was concluded that under both cold and supermarket storage conditions, the composite coatings of BW 2 % loaded with SA 2 mM efficiently delayed the ripening process and preserved the fruit quality attributes in pears up to 67 and 20 days of storage period, respectively. Fruit applied with this coating recorded the lowest weight loss, membrane permeability & MDA content and maintained fruit firmness, sensory quality, TSS, sugars, titratable acidity, TPC & total antioxidant activity. BW 2 % + SA 2 mM coatings lowered the PPO activity & inhibited the incidence of internal browning and efficiently postponed the respiration rate and activities of PME, PG & cellulase enzymes.EnglishThesis