Background: Efforts to reduce the waste of horticultural products and maintain the quality
of fresh agricultural products such as mushrooms during storage are of particular
importance for all producers. One of the ways to preserve the quality of fruits and
vegetables and control decay is to use natural antimicrobial compounds such as
microencapsulated plant essential oils.
Aim: This research was conducted to investigate the effect of different concentrations of
microencapsulated peppermint essential oil on the life after harvesting of button
mushrooms and achieving the best concentration of micro-encapsulated peppermint
essential oil and the active coating of the capsule to maintain the quality of edible
mushrooms at 4 oC for 20 days.
Methodology: It was done in a factorial experiment in the completely randomized design
with three replications including peppermint essential oil (0, 250, and 500 μ/l) alone and
microencapsulated with sodium alginate and cyclomethyl cellulose on the quality after
harvesting button mushrooms in the laboratory of the Persian Gulf University. The storage
conditions of treated mushrooms were packaged at 4°C for 20 days. All the quality
characteristics of mushrooms including weight loss, open cap, firmness, pH, soluble
solids, vitamin C, electrolyte leakage, microbial population, value l, a, b, browning
coefficient, color changes, total phenol, protein and peroxidase, catalase, hydrogen
peroxide, and polyphenol oxidase enzymes were investigated at 0, 10 and 20 days after
storage.
Results: The results of the analysis of variance showed that the interaction effect of storage
time and essential oil treatment in essential oil had a statistically effect on weight loss, open
cap, firmness, pH, soluble solids, vitamin C, electrolyte leakage percentage, microbial
population, value a, color changes, catalase enzyme and poly phenol oxidase enzyme, but
it was not significant on value l and b, browning coefficient, total phenol, protein,
peroxidase enz
