Abstract: Heat treatment is an effective measure for postharvest storage of broccoli. On the basis of the previous experiment, to take the optimum single temperature heat treatment as a comparison the harvested broccoli were instead treated by different combinations of two-stage heat treatment. The heat-treated broccoli were stored at usual commercial conditions as 5℃ for 10 d, then transferred to 20℃for 3 d. The storage qualities such as yellowing rate, mold spreading rate, chlorophyll content, cell membrane permeability, and peroxidase activity of the stored broccoli were assayed. The results demonstrated that the storage qualities of the two-stage heat treated broccoli were improved significantly in comparion with the single temperature heat treated broccoli, and the other detected indexes of the two-stage heat treated broccoli also exhibited intendency benefit to keeping the storage quality.

Key words: two-stage heat treatment, heat immersion, broccoli, postharvest