Aplikasi strach-based plastics (Bioplastik) sebagai bahan kemasan produk hortikultura (tomat dan paprika)

Abstract

One of the post-harvest handling for minimize the losses of horticultural product was regulating the storage temperature and packaging technique. The objective of this research was to determine the cold storage’s characteristic of agricultural product from the climacteric products (tomato) and non-climacteric products (bell pepper) that were packed by the fruit bag packaging from bioplastic compared with the HDPE. The packed product stored on three levels of storage temperature (5, 10 and 15oC) for 21 days and every three days the product was for respiration rate, weight losses, hardness, the changing of fruit color, total soluble solids and vitamin C content. The result of the research showed that bioplastic packaging could delay the climacteric phase of tomato until the 21st day of storage, longer than packed by the HDPE. However the bell pepper packed by the bio-plastic started the senescence phase since the 12th days of storage, faster than packed by HDPE. Bio-plastic packaging was un-appropriate for low temperature (5-10 oC) storage. Tomato and bell pepper packed by the bio-plastic were giving better color change and hardness during the storage temperature of 15 oC. Based on the ratio changing a*/b*, the tomato shelf life stored on the temperature of 15 oC with using the bio-plastic (29 days) was longer than using HDPE (25 days). The bell pepper with using the bio-plastic had lower shelf life than bell pepper using HDPE on all temperature levels.