Effect of relative humidity on pomegranate quality under simulated ambient storage conditions

The effects of relative humidity (RH) on the quality of pomegranate fruit (‘Wonderful’) stored in ambient temperature (20°C) under low RH (65±6.79%) and high RH (95±1.23%) conditions were studied. Significantly high weight loss, up to 29.13±1.49% at day 30, was observed in fruit stored at low RH compared to 5.78±0.44% at a high RH. Fruit stored under low RH was also severely shrivelled and reduced in size. The high RH environment better maintained the fruit colour, texture and chemical quality attributes. A regression model was developed to estimate the time history of weight loss of pomegranate stored under 65 and 95% RH ambient storage conditions. The equations had a high goodness-of-fit with R-squared values of 0.99 and 0.94 for low and high RH, respectively. For a 30-day storage period, the weight loss was estimated to a worth $0.58 kg-1 and $0.11 kg-1 under low and high RH conditions, respectively. These findings show that pomegranate fruit should preferably be stored at RH conditions ≥95% to maintain appearance, sensory quality and reduce weight loss.