Abstract:
Big onion is a highly demanded condiment in Sri Lanka that is
characterized with high post-harvest losses. Curing is a major management practice
that affects the post-harvest shelf life. Curing is not practiced by majority of farmers
due to rainy weather condition prevail during the harvesting season. Hence, this
experiment was carried out to test the effectiveness of shade curing to minimize the
storage loses over field curing. Two treatments were used namely storage followed by
shade curing and field curing. Physiological weight loss (PWL), Rotting Percentage
(RP), Sprouting percentage (SP),Total Soluble Solids (TSS), and Total Post-harvest
Loss (TPL) were recorded for three months duration. PWLwas significantly different
(P<0.05) at1 , 2 , and 3 months after storage where PWL of shade cured and field st nd rd
cured onions after three months of storage were 8.04± 1.6 and 12.62±1.62
respectively. No significant difference was observed (P>0.05) for TSS, rotting
percentage and sprouting. Results revealed that shade curing is important alternative
practices to conventional field curing that minimizes the total post-harvest loss where
itwas 9.15%and 13.7%respectively.
