Effect of postharvest exogenous edible coating treatments on inhibitor browning and maintaining quality of fresh mushroom

Abstract

The shelf-life of fresh mushrooms is limited to 1-3 days at ambient conditions and antioxidant characters are reduced and acquire a brown colour during post-harvest storage. Therefore, the present study was conducted to investigate the effect of some postharvest exogenous edible coating treatments of immersed in six different solutions for 5 min of calcium chloride (2%, 4%), chitosan (1%, 2%), CMC (1%, 2%) and control (distilled water) on reducing the browning, microbial load and maintaining quality during storage for 15 days at 4 ± 1 °C and 95% RH, during two successive seasons of 2021 and 2022 in 4th and 6th of January in the first and second seasons respectively. The obtained results revealed that dipping mushroom plants in a solution of chitosan 2% or calcium chloride 4% was the best treatment for reducing weight loss, while chitosan 2% for 5 min was the most effective treatment in reducing browning, PPO activity, total phenolic, flavonoids contents and inhibiting microbial counts for 12 days at 4 ± 1 °C and 95% RH.