Evaluation of time-temperature integrator for indicating the ripeness of kiwifruit in plastic container at home

Enzyme-based time-temperature integrators (TTIs) were applied to indicate the ripeness of plastic-container-packaged kiwifruit. The hypothesis was that the ethylene gas production, an indication of kiwifruit ripeness, depends on the time-temperature history. The market-purchased, unripe kiwifruit was assumed to be stored in a plastic container to ripen at home, as common practice in Korea. The kinetics of ethylene gas production and TTI color change was found to be suitable for the indication. The Arrhenius activation energy (E_a ) of the ethylene gas production and color changes of lipase-, amylase-, and laccase-based TTIs were 41.60 ± 10.87 kJ/mol, and 42.76 ± 9.57, 100.28 ± 6.84, and 30.49 ± 4.41 kJ/mol, respectively. Kiwifruit firmness was also tested as a practical, major quality factor. The E_a of the firmness changes was 39.66 ± 4.64 kJ/mol. In scenarios tests, the firmness could be most accurately predicted from the lipase-based TTI color. Overall, the lipase-based TTI was found to be the best in terms of the similarity of the E_a and the prediction accuracy. PRACTICAL APPLICATION: Currently, there is no commercially available indicator that can determine the ripeness of packaged kiwifruit. Although an ethylene gas indicator is possible, it has been difficult to commercialize because the gas may leak in the package. An indicator on plastic containers with kiwifruit, as is common in Korea, has been developed using a conventional time-temperature integrator (TTI). The hypothesis was that the production of ethylene gas, indicating kiwi ripening, is also dependent on the time-temperature history. It was found that the TTI color change over time was suitable for judging suitable kiwifruit hardness, a major kiwifruit ripeness index.