Bio-Efficacy Evaluation of Ethephon 39% Sl on Tomato (Solanum Lycopersicum L.) Fruits

Introduction

Tomato is one of the commercially grown vegetable crop stands third position after potato and sweet potato, occupying an area of 4.81 million hectare with an annual global production of 163.02 million tonnes ⁵. It is also popular in India and occupies an area of 8.82 lakh hectares with a production of 18.74 million metric tonnes with an average yield of 21.2 metric tonne per hectare ⁷. In West Bengal total area under tomato cultivation is 56,500 ha, production is 11, 41,500 tones and productivity is 20.2 ⁷.

Tomato contains wide range of flavonoids / phyto-chemicals, carotenoids and phenolic compounds especially lycopene, vitamin A, vitamin C. The lycopene imparts red colour to fruits and serves as anti oxidant, [beta]-carotene serves against free radical chain reaction and vitamin C is the efficient scavenger of free radicals ⁹. The fruits harvested at suitable stage influences nutritional quality and storage life. The fruits picked at mature green stage remained best to reduce injury in post-harvest handling. The fruits attain desirable flavour, quality, colour, palatable nature and other textural properties while in storage. Ripening is associated with change in composition i.e. conversion of starch to sugar. Additional to normal ripening process, it can be attained by application of ethephon ²¹. Shelf life is supreme aspect in terms of reduce in post-harvest losses. The tomato fruits treated with several chemicals and growth regulators to improve shelf life, uniform ripening and quality parameters like carotenoids and total phenol content ¹⁹. Ethephon or ethrel (2-chloroethylphosphonic acid) is known as a plant growth regulator which stimulates uniform ripening of fruit and reducing post-harvest damage ¹⁶. The suggested ethephon residue level is 2 mg/kg of tomato fruits ². The ethephon available in different commercial forms is being used for ripening of mature green tomato fruit. In fact information regarding minimum quantity of ethephon for ripening and storage of tomato fruit is still inadequate. Keeping this view in perspectives, the present experiment was conducted to standardize the bio efficacy of ethephon 39% SL on tomato fruits.

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Materials and Methods

The present experiment was undertaken to study the effect of ethephon 39% SL on post harvest quality of Tomato (Solanum lycopersicon L.) cv. Pan...