The concern regarding the increasing world population and climate change in recent years has caused water shortage to be an important limiting factor in the agriculture industry. The application of Regulated Deficit Irrigation (RDI) strategies is becoming a common practice to mitigate the effects of climate change and global lack of water resources. Fruit quality loss and tissue softening of apple fruits due to mechanical damage during transporting and marketing reduces the shelf life of early ripening fruits. In the present study, the effects of deficit irrigation and hand thinning on quality of the apple fruit cultivar ‘Golab’ were investigated during the post-harvest period. The treatments included control (100% crop evapotranspiration [ETc]) 100% of water requirement and RDI (50% ETc) and 50% of water requirement at the beginning of the growing season and full irrigation in the next season. The results showed that fruit growth under RDI and hand thinning significantly decreased and increased, respectively, compared to control. Some characteristics such as fruit weight, fruit firmness and total phenolic compound maintained or improved under RDI and hand thinning in comparison to control during storage. At the end of 6 weeks of cold storage, the highest values for both firmness (5.13 kg/cm3) and maturity index (30.20) were associated with RDI along with hand thinning treatment. Generally, it seems that RDI increased the quality of apple fruits but decreased the fruits’ growth.

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