417231

Preharvest Spraying of Calcium Chloride, Chitosan, and their Combination Effects on Tomato Growth, Yield, Fruit Characteristics, and Quality

Article

Last updated: 29 Mar 2025

Subjects

-

Tags

Horticulture (Vegetable, Pomology and Ornamentals)

Abstract

Postharvest losses are a great obstacle that reduces tomato production in many developing countries, including Egypt. Research was carried out to evaluate the effects of pre-harvest treatments on growth, fruit yield, quality, and fruit characteristics of tomato; variety ‘Nora 765'. The experiment comprised four spraying treatments, viz., control (without spraying), calcium chloride (CaCl2 1.5%), chitosan 1.5%, and a combination of chitosan 1.5% + CaCl2 1.5%, sprayed either foliar (F) or at Green Mature Fruits stage (GM). Foliar spraying with CaCl2 gave the tallest plants and the widest stems. Also, CaCl2 treated plants sprayed at either F or GM had higher fruit numbers than most of the treatments. Spraying the foliage with CaCl2 gave significantly the highest fruit yield in the experiments and showed a lower fruit weight loss than the control in most of the days. In the first season only, plants' foliar sprayed with CaCl2, chitosan, and mix treatments had better visual appearance and hardness than control fruits after 12 days of storage. Foliar spraying with chitosan had lower microbial fungi than the control. Flavonoids, and total phenolic contents were higher in all GM spraying treatments than the control. However, lycopene was lower in all foliar sprayed treatments than the control. It could be concluded that, under these experimental conditions, CaCl2 was the best treatment for tomato growth and yield and for improving fruit visual appearance, firmness, and delaying skin color development, while foliar chitosan can be used for better postharvest fruit characteristics only.

DOI

10.21608/ajas.2025.330403.1417

Keywords

firmness, Fruit visual appearance, Fruit weight loss, lycopene, microbial infection

Authors

First Name

Hasnaa

Last Name

Abdelaleem

MiddleName

M.

Affiliation

Vegetable Crops Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Assiut University Assiut, Egypt.

Email

-

City

Assiut,

Orcid

-

First Name

Mohamed

Last Name

EL-Dkeshy

MiddleName

H.Z.

Affiliation

Vegetable Crops Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Assiut University Assiut, Egypt.

Email

-

City

Assiut,

Orcid

-

First Name

Reham

Last Name

Abdalla

MiddleName

M.

Affiliation

Vegetable Crops Department, Faculty of Agriculture, Assiut University Assiut, Egypt.

Email

reham.abdalla@aun.edu.eg

City

Assiut,

Orcid

-

Volume

56

Article Issue

1

Related Issue

52760

Issue Date

2025-01-01

Receive Date

2024-10-23

Publish Date

2025-01-23

Page Start

296

Page End

313

Print ISSN

1110-0486

Online ISSN

2356-9840

Link

https://ajas.journals.ekb.eg/article_417231.html

Detail API

http://journals.ekb.eg?_action=service&article_code=417231

Order

417,231

Type

Research papers

Type Code

298

Publication Type

Journal

Publication Title

Assiut Journal of Agricultural Sciences

Publication Link

https://ajas.journals.ekb.eg/

MainTitle

Preharvest Spraying of Calcium Chloride, Chitosan, and their Combination Effects on Tomato Growth, Yield, Fruit Characteristics, and Quality

Details

Type

Article

Created At

29 Mar 2025