Application of Biofilms on Fruits of Avocado (Persea Americana Miller) in Postharvest

Avocado (Persea americana Miller) is one of the fruit trees that have been gaining interest among producers and consumers. There is a wide variety of avocados, among which we can cite: ‘Prince’, ‘Hass’, ‘Ouro Verde’, ‘Fuerte’, ‘Choquette’, ‘Manteiga’, ‘Breda’ and ‘Margarida’. Avocado is a very energetic fruit, rich in vitamins A, B, C and E and phenolic compounds, therefore, being provided with high antioxidant activity. Since it is a climacteric fruit, its shelf-life is short, thus, there is a high production loss in postharvest. In order to decrease this loss, some alternative techniques are used, such as, wax, irradiation, biofilms and refrigeration. In this work, we evaluated characteristics of fruits of cultivars ‘Breda’, ‘Choquette’ and ‘Ouro Verde’, covered with Chitosan 2% and manioc starch 2%, stored under refrigeration at 13ºC (± 1ºC, RH 80%). The fruits were submitted to analysis of color, pH, total titratable acidity, soluble solids, antioxidant activity, determination of lipids and phenolic compounds. From the results, we could observe that the use of biofilms was efficient for all cultivars, being that the best response for manioc starch 2% was cultivar ‘Ouro Verde’ and for Chitosan 2%, were cultivars ‘Breda’ and ‘Choquette’. Under these conditions, the fruits maintained their quality for a period of 15 days.