Effects of fruit baggings as preharvest treatments on the fruit quality of pineapple ‘MD-2’

Abstract

The demand for fresh pineapple fruit is currently highest for the MD2 pineapple variety. Continuous efforts are made to enhance the quality of MD2 pineapples, including the fruit skin colour, flesh colour, sweetness, and minimizing sunburn damage. Bagging is one of the pre-harvest methods that can be employed for this purpose. This research aims to find suitable bagging materials that meet the industry's criteria and assess the severity of sunburn in each bagging treatment. A completely randomized design was used in this study, with six different bagging materials and pineapples aged 80 Days After Forcing (DAF). The bagging materials used were the control, blue Polyethylene (PE) bag, white PE bag, black patent bag, paper bag, and the existing cap-shaped bagging technique using recycled paper from banana bagging, as utilized by PT. Great Giant Pineapple. Each treatment involved 120 pineapple samples harvested at 140 DAF. MD2 pineapples without bagging were found to provide the best results according to PT. Great Giant Pineapple's criteria, with green skin colour (1.35%) and uniform yellow flesh (85.62%).