Acta Scientiarum Polonorum Technologia Alimentaria

There is a general trend towards a continuous increase in fresh market sales of mushrooms and many methods have been researched to improve quality and shelf life during storage and marketing. As it is known, mushrooms are a very perishable commodity, with very high respiration rate and rapid quality deterioration, when kept at ambient temperature. In order to study the effect of modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) on the quality of three species of oyster mushrooms, P. ostreatus, P. sajor-caju and P. eryngii, whole mushrooms were packaged with two polymeric low density polyethylene films – Vileda Freshmate (A) and PE 52 LV Amcor (B), with passive modified atmosphere and stored at 4ºC. The quality and stability of MA packaged mushrooms were assessed, during storage, by package atmosphere composition (O2, CO2), soluble solid contents, weight loss, texture, surface colour and exudates measurements. It was verified that on the seventh day the P. ostreatus and P. sajor-caju carpophores presented identical quality, when packaged with the two films types, thereafter some decay was observed. Carpophores of P. eryngii had the same quality in the two film types at the end of the established storage.