Postharvest Treatment with Edible Bio- Materials to Preserve the Quality of ‘Shahvar-e-Shirin’ Pomegranate Arils

The present study was conducted to investigate the effects of salicylic acid (SA) and chitosan (CH) pre-treatments on the bioactive compounds and quality of pomegranate arils. The statistical design of the experiment was factorial based on a completely randomized design (CRD). It included 5 levels of treating solutions (CH at 0.5 and 1%, SA at 1 and 2 mmol L-1, and distilled water as control) × 3 levels of evaluation time (days 0, 7 and 14 of storage). Each 250 g randomly mixed ‘Shahvar-e-Shirin’ pomegranate aril served as an experimental unit with three replicates for each treatment. Treatments included 5 min dips in CH and SA aqueous solutions. Following air drying, arils of each experimental unit were packed in a clear hinged pet plastic clamshell container and stored for 14 days at 5 °C with a relative humidity of 90 ± 5%. Pre-treatments with SA and CH, especially at higher doses, reduced weight loss (WL) and respiration rate, improved firmness retention, and resulted in more preferred BrimA (consumer acceptability index; CAI) and TSS/TA ratio (maturity index; MI) as well as higher ascorbic acid content (AAC), total anthocyanin content (TAC), total phenolic content (TPC), and radical-scavenging activity (RSA) in the juice and assigned better sensory evaluation scores at the time of consumption compared to the control. Finally, it was predicted that these treatments would be a promising postharvest tool in optimum storage of minimally processed (MP) arils from commercial pomegranate cultivars, which needs to be evaluated