Physical-chemical quality of mango 'Uba' submetidos a injuria mecanica de impacto durante a colheita

The objective of this study was to evaluate the quality of 'Uba' mango fruit submitted to mechanical damage. The fruits were harvested in the 2012/2013 harvest, and let to drop once on a flat, hard surface, simulating the harvesting process of 'Uba' mango, which is to drop all the fruits of a plant when they are physiologically mature. Treatments consisted of different drop heights (zero, one, two, three, four and five meters), totaling six treatments. After the fall, the fruits were submitted to ripening, and then evaluated for fresh mass loss (FML), presence of external lesions (PEL), presence of internal lesions (PIL), soluble solids content (SS), titratable acidity (TA), pH, SS/TA ratio and vitamin C. There was no difference between fresh weight loss of the dropped fruits and control. Regarding the presence of external and internal lesions, damage in fruits due to drop height tends to increase. The fruits that were not dropped presented higher SS content than the others, while those that fell from a height of 5 m had the vitamin C content reduced by 27.78% compared to control. The decrease in SS content and vitamin C was influenced by damage caused by the impact. It is concluded that mechanical damage caused by the impact interferes in the main attributes of quality of fruits and pulp of "Uba" mango. Index terms: harvest, mango for industry, mechanical damage, pulp quality. O objetivo deste trabalho foi avaliar a qualidade da manga 'Uba' submetida a injuria mecanica de impacto. Os frutos foram colhidos, na safra 2012/2013, e deixados cair uma unica vez sobre uma superficie plana e rigida, simulando o processo de colheita da manga 'Uba', que consiste em derrubar todos os frutos de uma planta, quando os mesmos encontram se fisiologicamente maduros. As alturas de queda: zero, um, dois, tres, quatro e cinco metros, formaram seis tratamentos. Apos a queda, os frutos foram submetidos ao amadurecimento, e em seguida avaliados em relacao a perda de massa fresca (PMF), presenca de lesoes externas (PLE), presenca de lesoes internas (PLI), teor de solidos soluveis (SS), acidez titulavel (AT), pH, relacao SS/AT e vitamina C. Nao houve diferenca entre a perda de massa fresca dos frutos que sofreram queda e o controle. Com relacao a PLE e PLI, a tendencia e de aumento da injuria nos frutos relacionada a altura de queda. Os frutos que nao sofreram queda apresentaram maior teor de SS que os demais, enquanto que os que cairam de uma altura de 5 m tiveram o teor de vita