Introduction

The postharvest team has established more than a decade of collective expertise in the area of postharvest physiology and biochemistry in a number of local fruits. The team established itself with the Banana Project which started in the late 80’s under the supervision of Professor Helen Nair with the primary aim of understanding postharvest physiology in view of extending shelf life that may boost the possible export value of Mas (AA) bananas. A vacuum-pack technology was successfully developed by the postharvest team for the long term storage of Mas bananas in the early 90’s (Nair and Tung, 1991) and later extended to several other dessert and cooking bananas (Balamohan et al., 1997).  The group has also looked at the physiological and biochemical changes during ripening and extended storage of bananas (Chandran, 1998).Since then, the team has expanded postharvest research to other horticulture produce including mangoes, papaya, dragonfruits, hibiscus and orchids.

• Currently working on collaboration with the industry to establish effects of hot water treatment on the quality of papaya, application of modified atmosphere packaging to extend the shelf life and development of natural red dye from dragon fruit.

• Construction of a genomic library for mangoes, phylogenetic classification of Malaysian bamboos, molecular expression studies on senescence-related genes in orchids and cell wall hydrolases studies in bananas.

• Biotechnology for Banana improvement and Biotechnological manipulation of Orchids

• Postharvest studies of fruits and flowers

Facilities and Services

• Offer postharvest solution

• Managing and organizing small events (providing emcee, photographers, registration etc.)

Objectives

• To look at current problems of postharvest handling and storage and offer improvements by providing input

• To study at a molecular level the application of biotechnology for improving postharvest quality of produce eg: development of disease resistance clone, engineering of fruits or flowers with longer shelf life.

Contact

Dr. Chandran a/l Somasundram

Institute of Biological Sciences

Faculty of Science

Universiti Malaya

50603 Kuala Lumpur

E-mail: chandran@um.edu.my