3–32. Crop Post-Harvest: Science and Technology

108 Crop Post-Harvest: Science and Technology , First Edition. Edited by Debbie Rees, Graham Farrell and John Orchard. © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2012 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 6 Mango Zora Singh and Sukhvinder Pal Singh INTRODUCTION The mango Mangifera indica L. belongs to the Anacardiaceae family and is the second most important fruit crop of the tropics after banana. It is native to South Asia especially eastern India, Burma and the Malay Archipelago. It has been cultivated in this region since ancient times. However, it has spread to different parts of the world in the past few centuries. Mango tree is an arborescent evergreen, medium to large in size with rounded canopy and has a very long life span of sometimes more than 100 years. The fruit is a large, fleshy drupe with edible mesocarp, and the size and shape vary considerably depending upon the cultivar. There is a great diversity in mango cultivars distributed throughout the world. It is popularly known as ‘the king of fruits’ and is the choicest fruit due to its delicious taste, pleasant aroma and high nutritional value. Earlier considered as an exotic fruit, it has now become a popular fruit in the European and North American markets also. Mango is cultivated over an area of 3.87 million hectares with an annual production of 28.22 million tonnes in the world FAO 2005. The Asian continent contributes 75 of the total world mango production followed by Africa 9.67, North and Central America 9.04, South America 5.99 and a very little share from Oceania Table 6.1. Country-wise, India is world’s largest mango producing country contributing about 38 to the world production followed by China, Thailand, Pakistan, Mexico, Indonesia, Brazil and the Philippines FAO 2005. The mango industry experienced buoyant growth in the past decade and is likely to boom further in future as its cultivation is expanding to some newer regions of the world and the trade liberalization which imparts impetus to the expansion of international trade of fresh fruits including mango, is resulting in higher volume of fruits shipped across different continents. The international trade of fresh mangoes is expanding at a faster rate as consumers in the European and North American countries are developing the taste for the fruit. A massive increase in the export and import of mango has been observed in both quantity and monetary terms during the 2000s. Mango export rose from 0.33 million tonnes US335 million in 1995 to 0.9 million tonnes US583 million in 2004 FAO 2005. Despite the huge production in the Asian continent, its share in export is around 37 FAO 2005. Mango production is located in most of the developing countries of the world where an appropriate post-harvest handling infrastructure is still in infancy. It is a highly perishable fruit but keeps well for 9–10 days if harvested at mature green stage. However, the post-harvest behaviour of mango fruit is strongly influenced by the cultivar, harvest maturity, the post-harvest treatments and storage conditions. The chilling sensitive nature of mango fruit limits its long duration storage and transportation at low temperature below 13°C. The use of controlledmodi- fied atmosphere technology for long distance shipping has not been yet fully capitalized by the exporters. The restriction on the use of certain fumigants has narrowed the scope of post-harvest disinfestation treatments. The quar- antine requirements of various importing countries to prevent the entry of exotic pests to their domestic fruits