Pomegranate Guide

After harvest, pomegranates are transported to a sorting facility in a timely manner. It is not necessary to pre-cool fruit after harvest, but the fruit will benefit from being placed into cold storage as soon as possible after harvest. The pomegranate destined for the fresh market should be washed with chlorine, rinsed with water, and sorted by culls, cracks, defects, color, size, and weight. Fruit should also be treated with a postharvest fungicide such as Scholar (Syngenta), especially if it will be placed into longer-term cold storage. A storage wax can also be applied to promote the visual quality of the fruit and increase its storage life by reducing moisture loss. Pomegranate can also either be placed in storage bins (for later packaging) or packaged immediately into appropriate cartoons for the desired market.

Pomegranate can be stored for up to six weeks in open-air storage or five months using controlled atmosphere storage (CA). For high-quality fruit, the lowest temperature used should be 41° F for short-term storage (less than three weeks); 45° F is more appropriate for longer-term storage. For fruit with known disease pressures, it is advisable to store for less than three weeks at a reduced temperature of 32°-34° F. Low temperature discourages pathogen growth and spread, but will also cause chilling injury in fruit stored longer than three weeks. This will ultimately result in increased pathogenicity during and after removal from low-temperature storage.

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Most pomegranate cultivars are suitable to grow in 12° Fahrenheit, with the harder types surviving without damage down to 7° Fahrenheit. The majority of pomegranate varieties do not require winter chill hours, with the exception of a few cold-hardy cultivars. The tree is most resistant to the cold in the winter months and tends to be more susceptible to frost damage prior to reaching full "dormancy" in the fall and at bud break in the spring. It is during these periods that the bark is most susceptible to damage from frost, which usually occurs first on the south side of the tree closest to the ground. If frost damage is a problem, a possible solution is to paint the bark white with flat latex paint in order to reduce fluctuations between day and nighttime temperature extremes.

Pomegranates are extremely heat-tolerant and perform best when temperatures are above 85° F for at least 120 days a year. The trees are also drought-tolerant; however, supplemental irrigation is necessary during tree establishment and is critical for commercial fruit production. Without irrigation during prolonged periods of drought, fruit production will be lost, and substantial injury to young trees is likely.

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