Читать книгу The Manufacture of Tomato Products - W. G. Hier - Страница 27

There are many forms of rot, but the most common are the black rot, soft rot, and the mold growths in cracked tomatoes, either those which have cracked deeply around the stem end during their growth, or have been cracked or mashed in shipment. Just as soon as the skin is broken, either in a natural or unnatural way, molds start growing on that broken surface immediately, and develop very rapidly.

There is also the brown spotted tomato, which is not so common, but which has been very bad in some localities. I remember one field of tomatoes in southern Ohio several years ago which was absolutely worthless for canning purposes, due to the fact that practically all of the tomatoes were covered with brown spots, and under each one of these spots was a lump of white mold and mold spores. This field was plowed up before half of the tomatoes were picked, as the pulp plant which had contracted them refused to receive any more after having cooked several batches of pulp on which the mold ran very high due to this condition, which had never been met with before. The brown spots were soft and concave, and if once the character of the spot was fixed in the memory one could never fail to quickly detect that type of tomato if it was run across again.

The disease appeared in both central and southern Indiana the following year and I sent samples of the tomatoes to the Department of Agriculture at Washington and to the Indiana state experiment station, but it was new to them and they had no remedy for it. Whether it has appeared since I do not know, but it was very bad while it lasted. It is almost impossible to sort such tomatoes, as the spots are so numerous on the surface, and every spot would have to be cut out. When the spots are small, as they frequently are, they are very apt to pass by the sorters unnoticed, or at any rate considered harmless, but it doesn’t take many bushels of such tomatoes to send a batch over the limit in mold count.

Extremely soft spots which will yield to very slight pressure with the finger are usually receptacles for the growth of yeasts and bacteria and should be cut out. Nine times out of ten such spots are offensive to the nose when the skin of the tomato is broken. However, one quickly learns to pick them out by sight.

It is important that the sorting belt be well lighted with 100–watt lamps overhead provided with large reflectors. On dark days good sorting is impossible unless the belt is adequately lighted, and, of course, for sorting in the early morning or late evening adequate light is absolutely essential.