Abstract
The Fruits and vegetables are highly perishable and their shelf-life is limited to a few days under ambient and refrigeration condition respectively. After the harvest they have no barrier to product them from water loss due to their high respiration rate. When creating an external coating around the fruits and vegetables cuticle surface by dipping chemical or natural solution it forms a semi permeable membrane that extent shelf life of the products. In the present study naturally available oyster calcium hydroxide was used as an external coating agent. In addition grapes, brinjol and tomato samples were dipped with 2% calcium hydroxide solution and stored it in different storage conditions like ambient, refrigeration and Earthen pot cool chamber (EPCC -2) up to 9 days. During the storage period at every 48 hrs interval different parameters like physiological weight (PLW), bacterial and fungal growth, organoleptic quality were studied and recorded. The results showed that pretreatment with 2% calcium hydroxide significantly decreased the loss of physiological weight (PLW), reduced the number of bacterial and fungal growth and retaining high organoleptic quality like texture, flavor, appearance, firmness, taste and particularly color than untreated samples in all the storage conditions. It was concluded that coatings can protect perishable fresh produce from deterioration by retarding dehydration, suppressing respiration, improving texture quality, helping retain volatile flavor compounds and reducing microbial contamination finally extended shelf-life of all the stored produces compared with untreated samples.