Mitigating postharvest quantitative and qualitative losses in mango fruits through the application of biocontrol agents: An in-vivo and in-vitro assessment.

Mango is a commercial fruit crop of India that suffers huge postharvest losses every year. The application of biocontrol agents (BCAs) bears a vast potential for managing the same, which is yet to be exploited to its fullest extent. Hence, studies were conducted for BCAs application of , and strains on mango fruit under , conditions to know the efficacy of these BCAs on the postharvest pathogen, shelf life and quality retention of mango fruit. The 'poisoned food technique' was attempted for studies. For the studies, fruit of the commercial cultivar 'Amrapali' were un-inoculated and pre-inoculated with major postharvest pathogens (anthracnose: Colletotrichum and stem-end rot: ) were treated with BCA, followed by ambient storage at (24 ± 4 °C, 75 ± 5 % RH). From the results, it has been observed that under studies BCA (Strain: KP006) and (Strain: BJ0011) at the treatment level 10 CFU mL while, the at 10 CFU mL (Strain: BE0001) were significantly effective for pathogen inhibition. However, under the studies, the BCA (Strain: KP006) at 10 CFU mL treatment level was found to significantly reduce the pathogen's decay incidence while positively influencing the shelf life and biochemical (quality) attributes. This treatment increased the storage life of mango fruit by more than three days over control fruit. Therefore, BCA (Strain: KP006) at 10 CFU mL can be used to control the postharvest pathological loss of mango fruit without affecting its internal quality.