Abstract
Plants with high respiration rate like mulberry leaves and carnations are still active after harvesting. When these are afterwards packaged during transportation, a phenomenon of getting musty occurs due to the increase of the temperature and moisture at the center of package. The authors believed that this was largely due to the respiration of plants. They therefore made the following hypothesis and based from them their deductions:
1. In the part where the‘musting’ phenomenon occurs, there is no outflow or inflow air, water, and water vapor, and is under adiabatic conditions.
2. The heat generated by the plant is due to the oxidation of the saccharoids it contains.
3. The oxidation of the saccharoids is due to the 2-order reaction based on the theory of chemical reaction rate.
4. In the process of the plant temperatures increase, there is no relative time lapse between the temperatures of plant and the surrounding air.
Based on the suppositions above, an adiabatic closed container was made. The temperatures of the plant placed inside was measured and compared it with the predicted temperatures increase based on the computation using the saccharoid reaction formula. The curves in general were similar. However there is about 5-6°C in the values on the end of the curves and there is a little discrepancy in the inclination of the curves. It might be concluded that other factors for temperature increase other than the supposed saccharoids reaction should be considered.
