Karina Gallardo () (School of Economic Sciences, Washington State University)
Abstract
Ethylene has proven effective in shortening the postharvest cold storage period required for Anjou pears to ripen, allowing for market availability early in season. To analyze ethylene’s effect on eating quality and elicit consumers’ preferences and values, three sensory tests plus choice experiments were conducted at different points in time after harvest. Results indicate that consumers were willing to pay $2.26/lb to have highly edible quality pears in the early season that had been treated with ethylene to speed ripening. As the cold storage period increased (70 days and 169 days) these premiums for conditioned fruit decreased ($0.20/lb and $0.29/lb).
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by School of Economic Sciences, Washington State University in its series Working Papers with number
2009-16.