Chilling injury in green bananas during refrigerated container transport.

Chilling injury is the most common quality issue in seaborne intercontinental transport of green banana cv. Cavendish. The chilling injury limit is said to lie at 13.0 °C. This paper’s aim is to assess how chilling injury depends on set temperature and controller type in 40 ft. HC refrigerated containers. A field experiment is run with eight reefer containers carrying bananas from Colombia to Germany. The experimental design consists of two factors: set temperature and controller type. Both factors have two levels: set points 13.3 °C and 13.6 °C, a steady temperature controller and a cycling temperature controller. It is concluded that the expression of chilling injury symptoms is statistically significantly less at set temperature 13.6 °C than at 13.3 °C, and that the controller type has no significant effect. Even at set point 13.6 °C chilling injury was observed in three of the four containers.