3.6.2. Aril Colour

The colour of arils is very important, especially in terms of the consumption of fresh pomegranate fruit. There was a significant effect of storage time on lightness (*L*\*), redness (*a*\*), and chroma (*C*\*) colour attributes of arils for all treatments (Table 6). Fruit packed with liners significantly retained higher *L*\* and *a*\* aril colour attributes in comparison with fruit packed with no-liner at 84 d of cold storage. Fruit packed with no-liner retained 55.7% of the initial aril *L*\* colour attribute, compared to 82.4 and 76.9% for fruit packed with nonperforated 'Decco' and 'Zoe' liners, respectively. Fruit packed in micro-perforated Xtend® liner retained 67.3% of aril *L*\* colour attribute, with no significant difference compared to 68.4% and 70.4% for fruit packed with 2 mm macro-perforated and 4 mm macro-perforated HDPE liners, respectively. These results could be attributed to the influence of liner packaging on fruit weight loss and respiration rate. Excessive loss of moisture and high respiration rate by the no-liner packed fruit could have resulted in the loss of aril colour lightness and redness due to water stress and degradation of colour pigments.

**Table 6.** Impact of liner treatment on pomegranate aril colour parameters. Fruit were stored for 84 d at 5 ◦C and 90% relative humidity (RH).


<sup>1</sup> Lightnesss index, describes surface color in the range from 0 (black) to 100 (white). <sup>2</sup> Redness index, describes surface color in the range from green (−*a*\*) to red (+*a*\*). <sup>3</sup> Chroma. Mean values with different letters are significantly different (*p* < 0.05) according to Duncan's multiple range test. HDPE: high density polyethylene.

There was no significant difference in *a*\* and *C*\* aril colour attributes among all fruit packed with liners (Table 6). Therefore, perforation of liners did not have an effect on the redness and tone saturation colour attributes of the arils. Similarly, Arendse et al. [5] observed significant decrease of aril colour parameters *L*\*, *a*\*, and *C*\* with storage time for pomegranate (cv. 'Wonderful') fruit packed in boxes and stored at different temperature conditions.
