Journal of Experimental Agriculture International

The present work aims to evaluate the ripening of the banana under the effect of choking and calcium carbide. The experiment was carried out with banana fruits "Silver", harvested at the Production Unit of IFPE - Campus Vitória de Santo Antão. The experiment was conducted in a completely randomised design, containing 3 treatments (T1: Witness, T2: Use of calcium carbide, T3: Smothering) and 3 replicates. The analyses were carried out in the Laboratory of Physical and Chemical Analysis of the same institution, in February 2014. The fruits were subjected to titratable acidity and soluble solids analyses. Analyses were carried out at 1, 48 and 96 hours after application of the treatments. In the analysis of the soluble solid contents done in the first hour after the application of the experiment, only the control treatment and that of the bananas subjected to the carbide treatment were different from the others state values. The bananas conditioned to choking were the treatment that had the highest concentration of soluble solid state values, followed by the banana with carbide and the control. At 96 hours there was no significant difference between treatments. In the analysis of the soluble solid’s contents done in the first hour after the application of the treatments, only the control treatment and that of bananas subjected to the carbide were different from the others. The banana undergoes several metabolic changes during the maturation process that can be observed by the parameters measured in the tests carried out in this experiment. In the treatment where the bananas were subjected to the action of the carbide, there was an increase in the rate of titratable acidity and an acceleration in its maturation. Meanwhile, in the treatment where the fruits were conditioned to choking at the end of their maturation, they had higher concentrations of soluble solid.