Biochemical and Physical Changes in Some West Part of Iran Pear Cultivars During Storage

Many pear genotypes and cultivars exist in the west part of Iran. Some of these cultivars have has unique nutritional or storage ability traits. The current study was carried out to study biophysical and biochemical changes of pear fruit during storage and ripening. Seven local pears and ‘Shah Miveh’ were harvested and stored at 1 ˚C up to 90 days. Sampling was carried out at harvest time and 30 days interval from the cold storage. Some factors such as fruit weight loss, firmness, fruit density, dry matter percent, vitamin C and total phenolic content, titratable acidity (TA), total soluble solids (TSS) and pH were measured in each sampling time. The results showed that TSS increased from 13.2 to 15.98 percent in all cultivars during the storage time while the overall TA decreased. The vitamin C content decreased during the storage time and both the average value for cultivars and the rate of decrease were different in the studied cultivars. Fruit weight loss increased during study the and reached 10.1 percent by 90 days cold storage. The correlation among ascorbic acid, density and fruit firmness was observed so that the fruits with higher density value were firmer and the ascorbic acid content was higher in fruit with higher firmness. The correlation was observed between dry matter and fruit weight loss, so that dry matter increased in the high level of fruit weight loss.