Apple business investigating advantages of dynamic storage expertise

Editor’s be aware: An earlier model of this put up incorrectly recognized the SafePod producer, Storage Management Methods, within the photograph caption. Good Fruit Grower regrets the error.

Washington apple warehouses first turned serious about dynamic managed ambiance storage strategies for natural apples, however they quickly discovered the strategy may decrease rising storage problems in new varieties that their major device, 1-MCP, didn’t.

That appeals to packers throughout the nation.

Now, with a brand new $3.6 million grant from the U.S. Division of Agriculture’s Specialty Crop Analysis Initiative, postharvest scientists in New York, Michigan and Washington will research the perfect practices for utilizing dynamic managed ambiance storage. 

“We’re co-learning with the business,” mentioned Christopher Watkins, a postharvest physiologist at Cornell College and principal investigator on the mission. Gone are the times when warehouses would anticipate business scientists to set storage regimes for them, he mentioned. There are just too many new varieties. 

“Numerous them have storage problems that 1-MCP doesn’t enhance or in truth exacerbates,” he mentioned. “So, we’ve assembled this actually sturdy staff to have a look at what the (DCA) expertise does to guard fruit high quality and, most significantly, the economics of this higher-risk expertise.”

Whereas many warehouses are already investing in dynamic managed ambiance, analysis to know the perfect practices and proposals will assist, mentioned Emily Verbridge of the Okay.M. Davies Co., a storage provider based mostly in Williamson, New York. She serves on the mission’s advisory committee.

“We’re very excited concerning the grant,” she mentioned. “It’s making an attempt to determine the perfect storage strategies for these new varieties … which has enormous financial profit for growers as a result of it offers them a greater piece of fruit that may (be held) additional into the season.”

Dynamic managed ambiance storage, or DCA, refers back to the observe of monitoring and adjusting oxygen and carbon dioxide to ranges decrease than a typical managed ambiance storage room in order that respiration may be slowed as a lot as attainable earlier than the situations start to trigger stress on the fruit. It’s often known as monitored ultralow oxygen storage. 

“It’s precision agriculture for storage,” Watkins mentioned. “DCA is predicated on the precept that we’re in a position to measure the response of the fruit to emphasize — and reply.”

A number of business instruments allow this monitoring of fruit stress, both by monitoring the fruit’s respiration charge or a change within the fluorescence of the chlorophyll within the fruit’s pores and skin. The 2 most typical within the U.S. business are SafePods, bought by Storage Management Methods, which makes use of the respiration strategy, and Harvest Watch, which makes use of the chlorophyll fluorescence strategy. 

The analysis mission will consider each, Watkins mentioned.

At Washington State College’s Tree Fruit Analysis and Extension Heart in Wenatchee, postharvest physiologist Carolina Torres has each Gala and Honeycrisp in DCA storage with each monitoring techniques, in addition to common managed ambiance and refrigerated controls. She’s additionally working with fruit from a number of completely different orchards.

“We need to see how (DCA efficiency) modifications area to area and the way it modifications season to season,” she mentioned. 

As well as, she’s going to research WA 38 (marketed as Cosmic Crisp) whereas the Cornell staff will have a look at NY1 (marketed as SnapDragon). Each are among the many wave of Honeycrisp offspring more and more grown throughout the U.S. and more and more difficult warehouse managers.

“I usually joke that Honeycrisp by no means learn a textbook about what it’s alleged to do as an apple,” Watkins mentioned. “It’s modified our perspective on how varieties are alleged to behave.”

In the meantime, inner browning points have been cropping up for Galas in long-term storage. “DCA appears to be a really highly effective device to assist cut back that drawback,” he mentioned. 

Along with Watkins and Torres, the analysis staff consists of Cornell meals sensory scientist Robin Dando and economist Bradley Rickard, WSU economist Karina Gallardo, Michigan State College postharvest physiologist Randy Beaudry, and USDA Agricultural Analysis Service physiologist David Rudell. 

—by Kate Prengaman