Relationship between Evolved CO₂ and Increase in Sugar Content during Artificial Banana Ripening

Abstract

It has been reported in the preceeding paper that temperature was the only factor that affected banana ripening with ethylene which was estimated by sugar content of pulp. In order to control sugar content by temperature during artificial banana ripening, it was tried in this study to relate sugar content indirectly to ripening temperature through other factors.
The obtained results were summarized below.
1) Evolution rate of banana during ripening with ethylene was observed at different constant temperatures and shown in Fig. 4. Significant differences in evolution rate were seen between temperatures.
2) Change in evolution rate was predictable when ripening temperature was lowered within the variation of 2.5°C.
3) It was found that sugar content was closely correlated to the quantity of evolved CO₂ by banana, and the graph is shown in Fig. 9. This makes it possible to predict sugar content with good accuracy by knowing the quantity of evolved CO₂ during banana ripening.
4) In banana ripening without ethylene, the increase of sugar content up to 4500mg/kg of CO₂ evolution was less than that in ripening with ethylene while it was identical in ripening both with and without ethylene over 4500mg/kg of CO₂ evolution (Fig. 10). The value of 4500mg/kg could be used as the criterion for the end of storage of bananas.