# Shelf-life Assessment on European Cucumber Based on Accelerated Temperature-Humidity Stresses
## 3 Results
### Degradation and Statistical Analysis
Therefore, small changes in the percentage of weight loss are observed, but impact the \({}^{\circ}\)Brix growth at the beginning of the time. Because organic acids are a source of energy for fruits and vegetables and are used in the breathing process or transformed into sugars during maturation, treatments have a propensity to raise their pH values. This relationship is visualized in Figure 3.  
In the firmness analysis shown in Figure 4, a decreasing trend is seen, but an increase in firmness values is also observed. This is caused by the plastic covering. This is another reason of why the firmness analysis on European cucumbers at accelerated life testing were not taken into consideration, since it is observed that this variety develops consistency during storage. Figure 1: Weight loss with respect to time. Without cover (squares) and with cover (diamonds). \begin{table}
\begin{tabular}{c c c c} \hline \hline
**Parameter** & **Plastic Cover** & **Mean** & \(p\)**-Values** \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Weight loss (\%)} & With cover & 8.8689 & \multirow{2}{*}{0.0002} \\ \cline{2-3}  & Without cover & 0.3760 & \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Firmness (N)} & With cover & 69.3611 & \multirow{2}{*}{0.1} \\ \cline{2-3}  & Without cover & 69.7722 & \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{Total soluble solids (\({}^{\circ}\)Brix)} & With cover & 3.5167 & \multirow{2}{*}{0.002} \\ \cline{2-3}  & Without cover & 3.0667 & \\ \hline \multirow{2}{*}{pH} & With cover & 6.7983 & \multirow{2}{*}{0.277} \\ \cline{2-3}  & Without cover & 6.0600 & \\ \hline \hline \end{tabular}
\end{table} 
Table 5: Significance obtained from the degradation analysis. Percentage of weight loss, total soluble solids, firmness and pH. Figure 4: Changes in firmness relating to time. Without cover (squares) and with cover (diamonds). Figure 3: pH changes with respect to time. Without cover (squares) and with cover (diamonds). Figure 2: Total dissolved solids changes (°Brix) with respect to time. Without cover (squares) and with cover (diamonds). The percentage of weight loss of the European cucumbers revealed a statistically significant variation regarding temperature and relative humidity (\(p\) = 0.000). Table 6 presents a statistical examination of the influence of temperature, and relative humidity on the percentage of weight loss. As mentioned before, [PERSON] [3] stated that although wilting is well-known, the commercial quality of cucumber is impacted with a weight loss of more than 5%, in addition to other physicochemical parameters changing. According to [PERSON] [28], fruits and vegetables begin to show signs of water loss when they lose between 5 and 10% of their weight, primarily as a result of perspiration and the structural makeup of the tissues. Moreover, the methodology we followed for degradation analysis included a previous study showing that weight loss is presented in less than 1% in cucumbers with plastic films and about 8% in the cultivars without plastic films [21]. Based on our experimentation the weight loss percentage of European cucumbers, began at 5% for cucumbers without plastic covers and 0.5% for cucumbers with plastic covers; therefore, these values serve as reference limits for the incubation and testing phase. With the intention of determining and confirming the levels at failure due to quality loss, a correlation analysis was performed. Figure 5 shows the correlation analysis between the percentage of weight loss versus firmness, \"Brix, and pH. A high correlation is observed as weight loss increases, firmness, \"Brix, and pH, are considerably changed. Moreover, it can be observed that the scale is showing values between 0.1 and 0.9% of weight loss. Therefore, based on the correlation plot and the impact on changes on quality characteristics, 0.7 was determined as a point of failure in the case of cucumbers with covers. Figure 6 depicts the analysis of the correlation between the percentage of weight loss and firmness, \"Brix, and pH in the absence of a cover.