Asian Journal of Research and Review in Agriculture

Tomato (lycopersicon esculentum Mill.) is popular and widely consumed vegetable in Ethiopia,   since tomato highly perishable it encounter several problem after harvesting so postharvest handling is as critical as production practice due to delicate nature. The investigation was carried out at labratories of the Department of Horticulture at Wolaita Sodo Universty, Ethiopia to study the effect of different concentration level of calcium chloride postharvest treatment to extend shelf life, to reduce postharvest loss and maintain quality of tomato fruit. The general objective of this investigation was to investigate the effect of postharvest treatment on the extension of shelf life of tomato fruit.The postharvest treatment experiment were conducted by using a completely randomize design with four treatment and three replications. The postharvest treatment used in the experiment were set as control (T₄), tomato fruit dip with (T₁),  1% calciumchloride (T₂₎, 2% calcium chloride (T₃), 3% calcium chloride for 10 minutes. Experiment was keenly observed and data were recorded at three days interval on several parameters, which include physical parameter (Weight loss, shelf life and decay). The data obtained on physical characteristics of' tomato was statistically analyzed using analysi of variance (ANOVA) and the means of different parameters was compared by least significant different (LSD) test at 5% levels probablity using DMR.

Fruit treated with calcium chloride were significantly (p<0.05) differences non treated fruits in decay and their values were higher than the controls (Table 2),Where as calcium chloride treated fruit in terms of weight loss were not significant, but their value still higher than the controls (Table 2). From this investigation 2%*w/v calcium chloride postharvest treatment on quality of tomato fruit were the best treatments.