HANDLING AND SHIPPING FRESH CHERRIES AND PRUNES. 21 



with cherries, prunes, and loganberries, and afforded excellent facili- 

 ties for testing this type of plant, the practical phases of warehouse 

 precooling, and the relation of quick cooling to the more perishable 

 fruits grown in this section. 



Table VII and figure 7 present a comparison of the decay in the 

 precooled and nonprecooled prunes commercially handled during 

 the season of 1911. While these figures show consistent differences 

 in favor of precooling, these differences are by no means as striking 

 as are those between fruit carefully and commercially handled. The 

 favorable results obtained from precooling are probably sufficient to 

 justify fully the necessary expenditure in case fresh-fruit shipping 

 becomes an established practice with prunes and other small fruits in 



PRECOOLED NON PRECOOLED 



/>£/* C£-A/r DSCAY />&? CEA/r DECAY 



1 TEN DAYS IN ICED CAR T 



| 2.7 ON WITHDRAWAL 3.7 | 



i4S SIX DAYS LATER 



FIFTEEN DAYS IN ICED CAR 



| 4 2 ON WITHDRAWAL 64 | 



1 SIX DAYS LATER 103 



TWENTY DAYS IN ICED CAR 



I 4.7 ON WITHDRAWAL 5.8 | 



I SIX DAYS LATER 19.6 



Fig. 7. — Diagram illustrating the percentages of decay in precooled and nonprecooled 

 prunes commercially handled, Salem, Oreg., 1911. 



the Willamette Valley. The figures as given do not do full justice 

 to the precooled lots, because of the rapidity with which the non- 

 precooled fruit cooled after being placed in the partially filled re- 

 frigerator car. The nonprecooled fruit reached a temperature of 40° 

 F. in a very few hours, whereas under ordinary transit conditions it 

 would have required several days for most of the fruit to be reduced 

 to a temperature at which the ice would hold it. Therefore, in inter- 

 preting the precooling data these factors should be taken into con- 

 sideration. The precooled fruit showed considerably less decay, 

 even under the conditions under which the fruit was handled and 

 held in this experimental work, but it is reasonable to expect that the 

 differences would have been very much greater in favor of precooling 

 if full car-lot shipments had been possible. In most cases the ex- 

 perimental lots used in these precooling experiments were placed 

 with a full carload of fruit in the precooling room, and the work was 

 therefore done in most cases on a commercial basis. Where the 

 room was filled with one carload of fruit the cooling was accom- 

 plished in about six hours and required an average of about 2^ tons 

 of ice for cooling. 



