Management of onion postharvest in Santiago Delestero (Argentina)
Lawson, D.S. and Weires R.W.
Journal of Economic Entomology. Volume 84, Number 5, Oct 1991. Pages 1550-1557.
1991
บทคัดย่อ
In Santiago del Estero, Argentina, the second most important economic crop is the “short-day” onion (allium cepa L., cv. Valencianita), whose principal feature is its early harvest time which allows it to be first in the internal market and captures the best prices. The low quality of these bulbs as well as poor conservation, along with inappropriate handling during the harvest and postharvest, contributes to a decrease in the quality. Traditionally, curing and storing locally are not common practices. If we want to introduce this kind of onion into “Mercosur” it is fundamental to implement the necessary technolog8cal changes in order to provide a product with a high commercial quality. Half of the onion samples were artificiallly cured for forty-eight hours at 30 0C. The water content in the cured bulbs was found to be high during the storage period. The primary cause of commercial quality loss was due to Aspergillus presence during different periods of storage, but the loss was less pronounced in the cured bulbs. Only in the first month and in a controlled environment could the cured bulbs turned out to be 90% commercial quality onions.