DefinePK

Abstract

An experiment investigating the losses of onionbulbs occurring during the storage in different storagestructures was conducted at the Department of FarmStructures, Sindh Agriculture University, Tandojam.Freshly harvested onion bulbs free from defects werecollected from the local market of Nasarpur and were thenplaced in different storage structures (forced ventilatedwooden structure, naturally ventilated wooden structure,and traditional method) for 60 days. The quality in terms ofdifferent parameters that is physiological loss in weight,rotting, sprouting and firmness were carried out at aninterval of 10 days. The results showed that the storagetime and storage method had a significant effect on thequality of onion bulbs. Weight loss (0-23.5%), rotting (0- 26.8%) and sprouting (0-15.2%) of onion bulbs showed anincreasing trend throughout the storage period (60 days).However, firmness of the onion bulb decreased withincreasing storage period (8.3 to 3.2 lbs). Forced ventilatedwooden structure maintained lowest weight loss (14.8%),rotting (7.4%) and sprouting (7.8%) with highest firmness(5.6 lbs), followed by naturally ventilated woodenstructure and traditional method respectively. Ambienttemperature and relative humidity were lower in forcedventilated wooden structure followed by natural ventilatedwooden structure and traditional method respectively. Thepresent study concludes that forced ventilated woodenstructure resulted to be better in maintaining the qualityparameters of onion bulbs, the adoption of this method isstrongly suggested to reduce the storage losses at farmlevel. © 2020 Department of Agricultural Sciences, AIOU