A study of the relationship between fruit internal ethylene concentration at harvest and post-storage fruit quality of cv Empire apples

SummaryApples were collected at 4-day intervals for measurements of fruit internal ethylene concentration (IEC) in four commercial orchards of cv Empire apple. Post-storage evaluations of comparable apples indicated the optimum harvest dates (OHD) for low-ethylene controlled atmosphere (CA) storage occurred early in the period of accelerating ethylene production and IEC had indicated the relative differences in fruit maturity in the four orchards. However, there were highly significant differences in IEC at OHD within the four orchards, which indicated IEC did not precisely pinpoint OHD for low-ethylene CA. Among orchard differences OHD for normal CA were not closely related to IEC during the harvest period.