Background: Lemon (Citrus limetta) is one of the perishable fruits due to its high
water content, high metabolic activity and susceptibility to microbial and fungal rot.
It has a short post-harvest life. So one of the major challenges IS reducing the rate
of degradation of its qualitiv characteristics
Aim: This study was designed and performed to investigate the effect of thyme
extract, algae, nanosilica and plasma-activated water on the storage quality of sweet
lemon fruit during 40 days of storage.
Methodology: This research was conducted in 2020 in the laboratory of the Faculty
Agriculture, Persian Gulf University as a factorial experiment in the form of a
completely randomized design with 3 replications in laboratory operations. This
experiment has two factors including coating treatments: control (distilled water),
thyme essential oil (concentration 0.14 g / l), spirulina seaweed extract (3.75 g / l),
nanosilica (0.4 g / l) and Plasma activated water (PAW600) was each immersed for
10 minutes and also at different storage times (0, 20, 30 and 40 days) on sweet
fruits. Some characteristics of fruit such as weight loss percentage, fruit firmness
with skin, skinless fruit firmness, fruit skin thickness, vitamin C, total soluble solids
(TSS), titratable acidity (TA) and pH of fruit juice were measured.
Conclusions: According to the results, with the storage time, traits such as firmness
of fruit tissue with skin and without skin, thickness of fruit skin, vitamin C and TA
decreased and weight loss percentage and pH of fruit juice had a completely
increasing trend, while TSS changes up to day 30 storage increased and then
decreased. The lowest percentage of weight loss was observed in fruits treated with
nanosilica (4.14%). and plasma activated water (3.33 %). The highest firmness of
fruit with skin was obtained in the pre-storage treatment (9.2 kg / cm2) and the
highest firmness of fruitless skin was obtained in the treatment before storage (5.86
kg / cm2) and thyme