ASSESSMENT OF POSTHARVEST TRANSIT LOSSES OF TOMATO USING DIFFERENT PACKAGING SYSTEMS/UNITS IN NIGERIA

Abstract

Road transport system has increased significantly and it’s gradually becoming the most dominant means of
transporting agricultural products. The most widely used packaging facility for tomato in Nigeria today is done
with the traditional cane woven conical baskets. A preliminary study on this packaging method show a lot of
wastages while on transit. This leads to design of rectangular shaped woven baskets based on mechanical,
physical and rheological properties of UC-82B tomato cultivar. The designed packaging facility is of
specification 500 mm x 400 mm x 200 mm (length, width and depth, respectively) with filling capacity of 25 kg.
The conical basket having specification: top diameter x bottom diameter x depth (550 x 340 x 340 mm) was
found to carry 40 kg of tomato. The two baskets at full load with UC-82B tomato cultivar were field tested
concurrently on a Canter Truck via a single asphalted high way from Mairuwa village, a major tomato
production area in Katsina State to Ibadan, a major tomato consumption area in Oyo State, covering a distance
of 877 km. At the destination of the journey, tomato loss assessment was conducted; the conical basket recorded
post-harvest loss in transit of tomato of 13.22% and tomato weight loss per day of 6.85% while the rectangular
basket recorded post-harvest loss in transit of tomato of 3.58% with tomato weight loss per day of 1.91%. The
analysis of the generated data, using paired t-test, indicated that, the differences in tomato loss in transit and
weight loss per say of two packages were highly significant. The rectangular shaped woven basket stands
superior in transit as it was observed to have minimum tomatoes damage and wastages.