Effect of Shade Curing on Post-harvest Loss of Big Onion (Allium cepa) Selection 'Dambulla Red' Stored under Ambient Conditions.

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.