Acta Scientiarum Polonorum: Hortorum Cultus (Oct 2015)

QUALITY CHANGES IN GREAT PUMPKINS AND COLOURED POTATOES DURING STORAGE

  • Elvyra Jariene,
  • Honorata Danilcenko,
  • Nijolė Vaitkevičienė,
  • Edita Juknevičienė,
  • Marek Gajewski,
  • Živilė Juknevičienė,
  • Natalija Chupakhina

Journal volume & issue
Vol. 14, no. 5

Abstract

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Harvested potatoes and pumpkins are usually stored before processing or consumption. This makes it critical to understand the effect of storage on the chemical composition changes in these products. Prolonged storage can cause a decrease/increase or maintain the level of some nutrient. The objective of this study was to investigate the changes in chemical composition during storage of the great pumpkin cvs. ‘Justynka F1’, ‘Karowita’, ‘Amazonka’ fruit flesh and the coloured fleshed potato cvs. ‘Blue Congo’, ‘Vitelotte’ and ‘Blue Danube’ tubers. Standard methods were applied to determine the following: dry matter, crude fibre, crude ash and weight loss. After four months of storage, the dry matter content significantly increased in all potato cultivars tubers. The largest increase in dry matter was measured in tubers of ‘Blue Congo’ (2.34%). During storage, crude ash content changed non-significantly in all cultivars. Crude fibre content decreased significantly in ‘Blue Danube’ (1.02%) and ‘Vitelotte’ (0.50%) tubers. After four months of storage the largest weight losses were found in tubers of ‘Vitelotte’. After storage period dry matter significantly decreased in all tested pumpkin cultivars. The maximum dry matter and weight loss decrease was found in flesh of ‘Justynka F1’ (5.36%). The content of crude ash tended to increase in flesh of all cultivars, but no significant differences were found before and after storage period. Crude fibre content significantly decreased in all pumpkin cultivars. The highest crude fibre decrease was found in flesh of ‘Justynka F1’ (17.05%).

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