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 
/=5£>? C£, A/r 0£CAY PER CEA/r DECAV 
2S tO 15 IO B O 
to IS to IS 10 
1 1 ■ 1 ' 1 TEN DAYS IN ICED CAR 1 ' 
J ' 1 • 1. ' 
H 2.7 ON WITHDRAWAL 3.7 RB 
lllllllllllllll AB SIX DAYS LATER B.6. I1IIIII1IIIMIUH1I 
FIFTEEN DAYS IN ICED CAR 
BB 42 ON WITHDRAWAL 64 BBj 
MlllUlllllillllllUll 10 -& S ' x DAYS LATER 183 Ulllllllllllllli 
TWENTY DAYS IN ICED CAR 
Hj| 47 ON WITHDRAWAL 5.8 IBM 
'ill' ! ' : ' "' IIHIIII 20.1 SIX OAVS LATER' 19.6 Willi! 
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 2J tons 
of ice for cooling. 
