temperature and at 45
C demonstrated low peelfirmness and their
effect was on par with each other and the control at ambient
temperature. The difference in peelfirmness might be due partially
to the inhibition effect on disease severity. In addition, as suggested
byRodov et al. (2000)improvement of fruitfirmness by hot water
dips without reduction in fruit quality as compared with nonheated dipping treatment may be either by inhibiting enzymatic
systems involved in softening, or by elicitation of cell wall
strengthening processes, such as lignifications.
At the ripe stage, percent weight loss (%WL), total soluble solids
(TSS), titratable acidity (TA) and pH of ripe bananas did not show
any significant difference among plant extracts, dipping temperature and their combination. The results of the study are in agreement with previous reports on banana (Win et al., 2007; Jinasena
et al., 2011) which showed that despite highly significant difference in banana anthracnose severity, there was insignificant effect
on the chemical properties of bananas at uniform maturity stage in
a given cultivar. In agreement with the present result,Jabbar et al.
(2011) reported that the effect of different combinations of hot
water treatment and fungicides on TSS was statistically nonsignificant while there was significant effect onfirmness at the
ripe stage of mango fruits.
4. Conclusions
The present study showed that 20% plant extracts ofA. albida
andP. julifloraapplied at 50
C reduced anthracnose development
and improved shelf life and marketability without any detrimental
effect on the physico-chemical properties of bananas. Evaluation of
integrating plant extracts, hot water treatment, packaging materials and storage temperatures are justifiable. Also, further studies
are warranted on identifying the bioactive compounds in the plant
extracts that would be useful for laboratory synthesis and production of natural fungicides