Engineering Properties of Tomato Affected by Ultrasonic and Packaging During Storage

Articles in Press

Document Type : Research Article-en

Authors

• R. Gholami ¹
• A. Nourmohammadi ²
• E. Ahmadi ²
• H. Rabbani ³

¹ Department of Agricultural Machinery Engineering, Sonqor Agriculture Faculty, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran

² Department of Biosystem Engineering, Faculty of Agriculture, Bu-Ali Sina University, Hamedan, Iran

³ Mechanical Engineering of Biosystems Department, Razi University, Kermanshah, Iran

10.22067/jam.2025.91308.1324

Abstract

In this study, ultrasonic radiation (US), packaging film, controlled atmosphere packaging, and controlled storage temperature were utilized for tomaoto packaging. Prior to packaging, the samples underwent ultrasonic treatment and were subsequently packed using polyethylene film (PE) and polyethylene film equipped with 2% nanoclay particles (Nano film) under both normal atmospheric conditions and modified atmosphere (MA) (5% O₂ + 3% CO₂). These tomatoes were stored at 25°C and 4°C for 28 days. Weekly assessments of storage properties included an examination of physical aspects such as moisture and color indices, chemical factors like pH, total soluble solids (TSS), lycopene, and total phenolic content, as well as mechanical properties encompassing penetration force and elastic modulus. The results indicated that the storage had a detrimental effect on the trends of property changes. Utilizing a modified atmosphere, appropriate storage temperatures, and applying ultrasonic treatment and Nanofilm were found to regulate specific properties effectively. Statistical analysis revealed a significant impact of the applied treatments on most properties at both the 1% and 5% significance levels. On the other hand, an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) was employed for data prediction, and the results showed that the best structure in predicting the physical, mechanical, and chemical properties was 5-10-11. O₂ and CO₂ were predicted with high accuracy with R² = 0.93 and R² = 0.86, respectively, which has shown the accurate performance of the ANN in predicting the data with the selected structure.

Keywords

• Packaging
• Storage
• Tomato
• Ultrasonic

Main Subjects

• Post-harvest technologies

©2025 The author(s). This is an open access article distributed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0)

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