Post-harvest conservation of banana ‘Prata Gorutuba’ using giberelic acid

Gibberellic acid is a plant growth regulator, naturally occurring in the plant, and is indicated to prolong the post-harvest life of bananas, increasing the storage and commercialization period. Therefore, the objective of the present work was to evaluate the conservation period of ‘Prata-Gorutuba’ bananas with different concentrations of gibberellic acid associated with refrigerated storage and modified atmosphere. ‘Prata-Gorutuba’ banana fruits were used to set up two independent experiments. In the first, the fruits were stored for 25 days in a cold room (14.5 ± 1 °C and relative humidity of 85 ± 5%) and the evaluations were carried out five days apart. In the second experiment, the fruits were removed from the cold chamber and packaging after 25 days of storage and kept in ambient conditions (25± 1 °C) for complete ripening and evaluations were carried out daily for five days. The experimental design for the two experiments was the DIC, with the first experiment in a 5x6 factorial scheme (concentrations x evaluation periods) and in the second experiment in a 5x5 factorial scheme (concentrations x evaluation periods), with four replications and four fruits per repetition. In the first experiment, concentrations of 500 and 1000 ppm of gibberellic acid were efficient in keeping the fruits stored for 25 days, at refrigerated temperatures and a modified atmosphere, positively influencing the color, pH and acidity characteristics. In the second experiment, gibberellic acid was efficient in delaying the color development of fruits stored for 29 days.