A STUDY ON THE WINE-DATE PRESERVATION USING CO-60 GAMMA-RAY

The wine-dates go mouldy seriously when they are processed in a large scale and transported, from which farmers suffer heavy losses. In this paper, we treated dates with 5 different rediation dosages, and repea ted them six times, and then kept the dates in the temperature of 18-2 1-degrees-C. The resultes showed that the irradiation with 1.5 - 6.0 k Gy is very effective to kill the germs and moulds on dates cuticles, t he number of bacteria decreases with the dosages increasing, and can k eep them in store for more days. The analysis of variance and F- test indicated,that the days of preservation prolonged and the number of in fected mildew in the tenth day treated with the dosage above 1.5 kGy c ompared with check are both achieved 0. 01 significant level. But the nutritive components, such as carbohydrates, vegetable fats, proteins, amino-acides and microelements etc. have rio obvious difference. Unde r the condition of our experiments, the optimum irradiation dose, when stored 10 days, is 3.0 kGy and 6.0 kGy when stored 90 days.