Horticultural crops in India are currently grown on 12 million hectares representing 7% of the country’s total cropped area. Annual horticultural production is estimated at 100 million metric tonnes, which is over 18% of India’s gross agricultural output. India is the third largest producer of fruits after Brazil and the United States, while its vegetable production is exceeded only by China. Kinnow a first generation hybrid of “King” and “Willow leaf” mandarins, was evolved by late Dr. H.B. Frost at University of California, Regional fruit station USA. It was first introduced in India during early 1940’s at the fruit experiment station of Punjab Agriculture College and Research Institute Lyallpur by S. Bhadur Lal Singh.

Owing to the poor post harvest infrastructure, wastage of kinnow fruit is over 25% to 30% of the total national production amounting to 0.32MMT. This is mainly due to perishable nature of fruit along with the major hurdles like lack of precooling and cold storage infrastructure facilities, low price due to seasonal glut and stem puncturing. Therefore the only alternative is to process this fruit in the form of juice and other juice-based product. Presently only 5% of this is processed. Post harvest activities include cooling, curing, handling, storage, processing, packaging, transport and the market phase. Post harvest management is about maintaining quality from production in the paddock to the vegetables being placed on a plate for consumption. Maintaining vegetable quality requires good systems and communication throughout the supply chain as each step is influenced by the previous; it is a chain of interdependent activities.

In most of the packhouse, the operational line is: fruit from field brought i to packhouse blemished/damaged fruit discardedfruits are washed (detergent and fungicides)-rinsed (fresh water)- waxed-dried-sorted-stamped-sizedpacked- and then either temporarily held in cold store or transported to the market. However, there are variations in operational lines and operations may be modified, as under some conditions the process of degreening and colouring may also be needed. Storage and shipping Citrus is a wonderful fruit, as it can be stored on tree, even after attaining full maturity. However, the duration of on tree storage varies with the cultivars.

In case of postharvest storage, mandarins are kept at 5-8 °C, while oranges at 4-8 °C, with relative humidity of 90-95% (Kader and Arpaia, 2002). Although, fruits could be stored at low O2 (3-6%) and CO2 (2.5-4%) concentrations for >5 months (Sun and Sun, 1998), however, controlled atmosphere is not commercially used due to high cost with little advantages. In Pakistan, the potential storage of Kinnow mandarin is yet to be exploited.