Comparative Assessment of Solar Refrigerated and Evaporative Cooled (SREC) Structure for On-Farm Storage of Tomatoes

Tomato is an important horticultural crop that is grown worldwide. However tomato is a perishable fruit that needs storage facilities to retard the ripening after harvest, to increase shelf life. Solar refrigerated and evaporative cooled (SREC) structure has developed at the Indian Agricultural Research Institute (IARI) in New Delhi, is an on-farm, off-grid, cold storage option for perishable horticultural produce. SREC storage structure uses an evaporative cooling with solar refrigeration system that provides small holder farmers affordable access to cold storage facility without electrical connection to keep harvested farm produce cool and fresh in farmer’s field. Therefore study of comparative assessment of SREC structure for on-farm storage of tomatoes was conducted. Experiments were conducted to determine and compare interaction of operational parameters temperature and relative humidity and crop parameters weight loss, color change, firmness of tomatoes stored in four storage conditions SREC, EC (evaporative cooled), UL (uncooled laboratory), and REF (refrigerator). The temperature in SREC varied between 4 and 16 °C with relative humidity of 85–100% while UL ambient condition temperature varied between 10 and 35°C. Storage conditions affected the weight loss, color change, firmness of tomato significantly (p<0.05). Overall, the postharvest quality retention was better in SREC and REF as compared to EC and ambient condition.