Bishnoi et al. (2018) Can J Biotech 1(4): 80-87 https://doi.org/10.24870/cjb.2017-000111 Canadian Journal of Biotechnology ISSN 2560-8304 ORIGINAL RESEARCH PAPER OPEN ACCESS 80 | Page Can J Biotech http://www.canadianjbiotech.com January 2018| Volume 01| Issue 04 © 2018 Bishnoi et al.; licensee Canadian Journal of Biotechnology. This is an open access article distributed as per the terms of Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial 4.0 International (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Influence of coating developed from oligomer isolated from lac resin on post-harvest quality and shelf life of peaches (Prunuspersica L.) Anjali Bishnoi 1,2* , H.M. Chawla 1 and Maulin Shah 3 1 Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology, HauzKhas, New Delhi 110016, INDIA 2 Present address: Department of Polymer & Rubber Technology, Shrof S.R. Rotary Institute of Chemical Technology, Block No. 402, Valia, Bharuch, Gujarat 393001, INDIA 3 Division of Applied & Environmental Microbiology, Enviro Technology Limited, Ankleshwar, Gujarat 393002, INDIA Received: Sep 08, 2017; Revised: Jan 18, 2018; Accepted: Jan 22, 2018 Abstract Large quantities of fresh fruits are produced that never reach the consumers due to heavy post-harvest losses, lack of storage, transportation care and less acceptable quality. These losses are not only concerned in terms of the revenue but it also concern in terms of health and life style of human being. To fulfill consumer demand and to avoid losses due to environmental variability, several methods are being utilized to increase the shelf life of fruits. Fruit coatings are considered as one of the widely used methods. This work investigates the effect of fruit coating developed from oligomer (P-104), isolated from lac resin on the quality of peach (Prunuspersica L.) when stored at room temperature (36-40°C) and at refrigerator temperature (4-8°C) temperature. Fruit quality was evaluated by measuring physiological weight loss, color and textural changes as well as microbiological evaluation at a regular interval of four days. When kept at room temperature, uncoated peaches remained fresh and microbiologically safe for 4 days only while shelf life of coated peaches increased to 12 days. Again the shelf life of coated peaches prolonged to 24 days when stored at refrigerator temperature. These results showed that the combined effect of coating and low storage temperature could improve the shelf life of peaches indicating the potential of this combination for fruits preservation. Keywords: Prunuspersica, Coating, Color, Firmness, Shelf life, Microbiological evaluation Introduction It is well known that fruits and vegetables play a vital role in human diet as sources of calories, vitamins, dietary fiber and special nutraceuticals. Many fruits develop a waxy coat on their epidermis as they mature on the plant but this natural waxy coat is not adequate to offer protection against water loss and high respiration rate that follow when they are removed from the living tree leading to the spoilage of these fresh produce. Such post-harvest losses can be reduced to some extent by increasing the wax content on fruit surface [1, 2] utilizing low temperature technologies [3], efficient packaging [4], use of coatings [5-10], nanotechnology [11- 13], osmotic dehydration, irradiation [14, 15] and other ______________________________ *Corresponding author: Email: anjali.bishnoi@srict.in, anjali_bishnoi@yahoo.com techniques. The peach fruit softens quickly after harvest and leads to huge losses in the marketing chain due to over-ripeness. Post- harvest decay due to rapid ripening in peaches is the major factor that limits their shelf-life which poses a serious constraint for efficient handling and transportation [16]. Application of low temperature techniques have been determined to provide delayed fruit degradation by reducing its biological and chemical activity but these methods require refrigerated transport and storage tanks [17-20]. Koukounaras et al. [21] have also investigated the effect of short-term heat treatment on the quality of fresh-cut peach. Intermittent warming has been reported to increase the shelf-life of firm- mature and firm-breaker peaches by 1 and 2 weeks, respectively [17, 18]. Likewise, Zhang et al. [22] have reported that self-defense capability of peach fruit was