After harvesting, pears undergo numerous biochemical processes and frequently fail to reach acceptable quality. The uses of packaging and ethylene (C2H4) absorber are regarded as well-known ways to solve that problem. However, accumulated CO2 inthe package can promote the symptoms of internal browning on pear flesh also exacerbated by too low O2 concentrations. Toinhibit the symptoms in ‘Silver Bell’ pear for a long period, we utilized CO2 adsorbent, CO2 adsorbent plus C2H4 adsorbent, and without both adsorbents in a bag to investigate their effects on internal browning development for 7 months in cold-storage. We found both adsorbents successfully reduced CO2 and C2H4 levels even though the incidences were visually found at 3 months of storage. Most severe internal browning was observed on CO2 adsorbent-untreated pears under high CO2 levels (7-9 %)
increasing since the beginning of storage. Therefore, there were no significant differences on the color and flesh firmness among the treatments, except controls, during cold-storage. Internal browning-affected pears showed harder flesh, greener and darker color compared with unaffected pears. Interestingly, control samples also suffered internal browning under low CO2 ( ̴ 0.1 %) and high O2 ( ̴ 20.5 %) concentrations after 5 months in storage with medium damage levels. We conclude that the uses of CO2
and C2H4 adsorbents successfully lowered CO2 and C2H4 levels in the bags during cold storage, but the both failed to prevent an internal browning development because too long storage period eventually caused internal browning.