FRUIT WHOLESALE
Fruit – Vegetable – Tropical Fruits
Fruit – Vegetable – Tropical Fruits
With the storage of apples and pears one distinguishes three to four different storage types: natural storage, cold storage and CA storage as well as, perhaps, ULO storage as an independent storage type.
A nature storage mostly is a simple a chilly earth cellar with preferably high air humidity. However, this storage type plays a role only in the domestic area and with the hobby fruit growing. With thin transparency bags from polyethylene which, however, every now and then must be deaerated with pinholes, one can reach a kind of CA storage effect in the household.
In a cold storage the temperature is held by refrigerating machines consistently, according to variety on a value from 0 °C to +4 °C with apples as well as -1 °C to +1 °C with pears, and thereby the ripening process is slowed down. Additionaly cold storages are provided with air humidification equipments, which guarantee an air humidity between 90 % and 95 % and thereby reduce drying up of the fruits.
A CA storage (Controlled Athmosphere) is an additionally gastight cold storage, in which supplementary to the temperature and air humidity the composition of the air with reference to oxygen and carbon dioxide is held on a steady value. The oxygen fraction in the air is reduced and the carbon dioxide fraction is increased and thus the maturation process is strongly slowed down. The desired values in oxygen and carbon dioxide are technically adjusted or originate after some time by the ripening process of the fruits in the gasproof storage, while with the maturation (= respiration) oxygen is consumed and carbon dioxide is generated.
A further development of the CA storage is the so-called ULO storage (Ultra Low Oxygen), with which the content of oxygen is held extremely close to the necessary minimum limit for a maintenance of the biological ripeening activity and thereby the maturation of the fruits radically can be slowed down.