Pome fruit storage

When storing pome fruit to three different camps to four different levels: tent, cold storage and controlled atmosphere storage and possibly the ULO -Storage as an independent storage form.

Natural storage

A tent or fresh air bearing is usually simply a cool earth cellar with the highest possible humidity. However, this form of storage only plays a role in the domestic sector and in fruit growing . A kind of CA storage effect in the household can be achieved with thin foil bags made of polyethylene , which, however, have to be vented with pin pricks from time to time.

Cold storage

In a cold store, refrigeration machines keep the temperature constant at a value of 0 ° C to +4 ° C for apples and –1 ° C to +1 ° C for pears , depending on the variety , thereby slowing down the ripening process. In addition, cold stores are equipped with air humidification systems, which guarantee a humidity between 90% and 95% and thus reduce the drying out of the fruit.

CA storage

A CA-bearing ( C ontrolled A tmosphere) is a cooling gas-tight bearing in which in addition to temperature and humidity, the composition of the air with respect to oxygen and carbon dioxide is maintained at a constant value. The proportion of oxygen in the air is reduced and the proportion of carbon dioxide is increased, which significantly slows down the ripening process. The desired values ​​of oxygen and carbon dioxide are set or arise after some time by the ripening of the fruit in the gas-tight space by consuming oxygen and generating carbon dioxide during ripening (= breathing).

ULO storage

A further development of CA-bearing is the so-called ULO bearings ( U ltra L ow O xygen), in which the oxygen content is kept extremely short of the necessary for the maintenance of the biological maturity activity minimum limit and the maturation of the fruit can be characterized extremely slow .