Effect of post-harvest treatments on surface micro-flora density of apple fruits

Post-harvest treatment of apple fruits with bio-resources like plant extract, edible carnauba wax, botanical formulation (botanical formulation-1 and 2) has been applied via dip treatment for 30 minutes. Potential effect of these treatments was observed in micro-flora present on the surface of fruits after 48 hour of treatment during year 2013 and 2014. The fungal and bacterial count increased with time in untreated fruits during storage. However,fruits treated with fungicide (Score) had minimum fungal and bacterial population count (4.58 × 103 cfu/ml and 24.91× 103 cfu/ml) followed by BF2 (6.33× 103 and 22.74× 103 cfu/ml) after 48 hours of treatment. Therefore, cow urine based botanical formulation was observed to be quite effective in reducing the microbial population during storage of fruit for long time.