Introduction
Mushrooms are highly transpiring and respiring fresh commodities.
They are sensitive to surrounding humidity levels; low
relative humidity (RH) results in excessive loss of weight and
firmness, while very high RH favours water vapour condensation
on mushroom surface, which accelerates microbial growth and
discolouration (Mahajan et al., 2008a). Thus, their postharvest life
is shortened as consequence of these processes. Appropriate
packaging is one of the essential methods for protecting and
maintaining the quality, and prolonging the shelf life of produce
from growers to consumers. It is well established that package
gas composition in modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) is
influenced by respiration rate of the product and the gas
permeability of the packaging
film (Song et al., 2002; Caleb
et al., 2013a). Current MAP design considers the respiration rate of
product as the only important parameter for deciding target gas
barrier properties required to achieve an equilibrium modified
atmospheres. However, besides in-package gas composition it is
also important to control the in-package level of relative humidity,
in order to avoid condensation and/or mould and bacterial
development in MAP systems