Vol. 79 No: 2

Title:
An open cuvette for heating individual fruits on kiwifruit vines

Author:
W.P. SNELGAR

pp: 335-340

Abstract:
A set of cuvettes that heat individual fruits on a kiwifruit has been constructed. This apparatus will be used to determine how fruit characteristics are affected by temperature at various stages of fruit growth.The system consists of 25 cylindrical cuvettes each of which can be fitted around a single kiwifruit while it was still attached to a vine in the field. The cuvettes have no top or bottom, so air can move freely through them. Each cuvette is fitted with a 10 watt heating element that radiantly heats the fruit. A datalogger monitors cuvette temperatures and turns the heaters on and off via a multi channel controller. During a 5 d test period heated fruit were maintained at 4.5K ±0.1 (SD) above the temperature of ambient fruit.The cuvette system was tested on mature kiwifruit vines (Actinidia deliciosa (A. Chev.) C.F. Liang et A.R. Ferguson) for 48 d up to harvest. Heating increased the fresh weight and dry-matter content of fruit while delaying the rise in soluble solids concentration. The technique is useful for defining how fruit characteristics change with temperature. However, because only a small proportion of the fruit on a vine are heated, considerable caution is needed when interpreting results.

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