tent to which quality attributes in Red Pippin, Gala and Jonagold apples
vary when stored under different CA regimes. In these examples, dif-
ferent CA conditions had little effect on the average concentration of
sugars and acids although improvements in the firmness of Gala and
Jonagold were achieved by maintaining a higher carbon dioxide con-
centration in the presence of 1% oxygen. In Gala apples, the variability
in firmness of the fruit was similar in both CA regimes tested, whereas
in Jonagold apples the presence of carbon dioxide increased average
firmness and decreased variability. This result indicates an interaction
between consignments and the storage environment.
AN APPROACH TO ACHIEVING CONSISTENT
QUALITY FROM STORE
Because of the variability in quality that exists in fruit at the time of
harvest and ex-store, it may seem an insurmountable task to provide fruit
of consistently high quality to the consumer during the marketing pe-
riod for any particular cultivar. With current storage technology, some
change in the quality characteristics of the fruit during storage is in-
evitable, but it is possible to define a storage period and storage condi-
tions that will generally provide the quality expected of any given
cultivar. Postharvest research has led to a continual improvement in stor-
age technology and to the provision of recommendations that are ex-
pected to induce no injury to the fruit and to provide fruit that are free
of physiological disorders and are of acceptable eating quality. It is par-
ticularly important to include fruit from a range of orchards at an early
stage in storage experiments and to carry out trials over several years so
that storage behavior can be assessed adequately.
Usually, some knowledge of the composition and physiological state
of the fruit at harvest is critical to achieve acceptable eating quality and
minimal development of physiological disorders in the stored fruit. Once
the most appropriate storage conditions and termination dates for a par-
ticular cultivar have been established, the extent of variability in stor-
age quality needs to be quantified. If consignments are identified as
having unsatisfactory quality, further work is needed to investigate the
cause of the problem and to determine how to maximize the storage po-
tential of the fruit. This approach requires a pooling of knowledge from
physiologists involved in plant development and those concerned with
postharvest physiology. An integration of skills and a realization that