Horticulture and Post-Harvest Technology
What the exam tests
Horticulture and Post-Harvest Technology covers orchard planning, propagation, pruning, maturity indices, harvesting, grading, packaging, storage and loss assessment for fruits, vegetables and flowers.
Core rules
- Climacteric fruits (banana, mango, apple, tomato) ripen after harvest with a respiration and ethylene peak; non-climacteric fruits (citrus, grape, strawberry) do not ripen further after harvest.
- Maturity indices include days after fruit set, total soluble solids (TSS), firmness, starch iodine test and ease of detachment. Harvest at physiological maturity for storage; at horticultural maturity for immediate market.
- Post-harvest loss is cumulative across harvesting, handling, transport and storage. Multiply the surviving fractions, not the losses.
- Cool storage slows respiration, but chilling injury occurs below safe temperatures for tropical crops.
Worked example
1,000 kg tomato: 10% harvest loss, 5% transport loss, 8% storage loss. Remaining = 1,000 × 0.90 × 0.95 × 0.92 = 786.6 kg. Total loss = 213.4 kg, or 21.3%. Adding 10 + 5 + 8 = 23% overstates the loss because each percentage applies to a smaller remaining quantity.
Traps
Treating tomato as non-climacteric; adding percentage losses; storing banana or mango at refrigerator temperatures; and using TSS alone as a maturity index for every crop.