Modeling Blueberry Firmness and Mass Loss During Cooling Delays and Storage

Blueberry mass and firmness losses in postharvest environments were measured todetermine the effect of cooling delays at selected temperatures. Models were developed from theslopes of mass and firmness values plotted against time for four temperatures (4, 21, 27 and 32 C).The models were evaluated by holding other sets of blueberries at three temperatures (21, 27 and 32C) and at high relative humidity (95 %) for cooling delays of 0, 2, 4, 8, 12 and 24 hours beforestorage at 4 C for 24 or 96 hours. Good correlations among predicted versus observed datashowed that it was possible to model the mass and firmness losses of blueberries at differenttemperatures and cooling delays. The impact of cooling delays was less than expected whencompared with losses caused by low temperature storage for only four days.