What happens in a full-scale kiwifruit curing stack?

Abstract

Curing of kiwifruit occurs immediately after harvest, where the fruit are placed in picking bins in a shaded region for a few days. This procedure was originally developed in order to reduce subsequent Botrytis rots in storage, but now is also used as a logistical tool to enable accumulation of fruit at the packhouse in front of the grading system. Rates of cooling to storage temperature have been identified as influencing long-term storage outcomes (firmness and low-temperature breakdown development) for kiwifruit. Consequently, given that curing is the process immediately prior to packing and cooling, questions now exist about how curing is influencing long-term storage outcomes. In order to be able to simulate and understand the curing process, more knowledge on what occurs within a commercial-scale curing stack is required. In this work, temperature, humidity and weight loss of more than 200 full-scale commercial bins of fruit from a block of orchard were monitored from harvest to packing over a three-day period. The resulting data provide an example of the potential for positional and temporal variability that is created during the curing process, within a typical batch of kiwifruit destined for long-term storage.

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