As a result, most of the fruits get damaged leading to reduced fruit quality, and shelf life is also affected . Then they are stored under poor storage conditions for ripening purposes with less attention is given to control the temperature, relative humidity, and air circulation of ripening rooms. The farmers and sellers also have limited knowledge of post-harvest handling practices of bananas. All these have aggregated negative impacts on the post-harvest losses and delivery of poor quality and external bruised fruits to the local markets . This poor handling reflects lack of awareness in the whole post-harvest handling system including lack of appropriate harvesting technology, transportation, storage, and ripening facilities .The 2017/2018 survey results  also show that the ripening system followed in Eritrea in which smoke generated from kerosene burning systems are mainly used is very poor. In this smoke-based system,vertical grow table banana fruits are separated from the bunch during unloading and packed into wooden boxes and kept in air-tight rooms where kerosene stove is burned for about 24 to 48 hrs depending on the external environmental conditions.

Less attention is given to controlling temperature, relative humidity and air circulation inside the ripening rooms. All these will have a cumulative effect on the fruit quality and shelf life of bananas. On the other hand, lack of infrastructure facilities has limited the implementation of improved ripening systems and storage practices.Banana ripening with ethylene is a well-known process; while the effectiveness of the traditional ripening methods practiced in Eritrea has not yet been evaluated from the fruit quality and shelf life point of view . Under the current economic situation and lack of improved technologies in Eritrea, ethylene-based ripening methods are unlikely to be expanded. In addition to that, cheaper alternatives such as ethephon and acetylene which are widely used in many other poor countries have been banned due to the negative effects on human health. Therefore, it is important to search for better alternative methods that have no negative effect on human health and at least can be applied at a small-scale ripening system which may have collective contribution towards improving the quality of banana fruits displayed in local markets. Thus, this study was designed to assess the currently practiced post-harvest handling method and the smoke from kerosene burning-based ripening methods compared to other methods and find out a better and safer alternative for improving the quality and shelf life of banana. 

The first group of fruits  was harvested by the researcher directly from the farm and was handled properly until it has reached the laboratory in the college in a way that post-harvest damage was avoided or kept as minimum as possible. The second group of fruits  was of the same variety and from the same farm,but harvested by the farmer and transported by the wholesalers to the ripening room in Keren . This allowed the fruits to pass all the common post-harvest handling practices applied in Eritrea. As soon as the fruits reached the ripening room, samples were collected and transported to the laboratory in HAC. For avoiding variation due to time factors between the two groups; it was arranged to be harvested, transported, and reach the laboratory at HAC on the same day. When the banana fruits reached the laboratory, they were carefully unloaded,and to remove the field heat they were stored in a cool place  for about two hours. Then fruits were graded based on size, maturity stage,mobile vertical grow tables and level of damage. Following that, damaged fruits were removed to avoid spoilage of the other fruits, and the remaining good fruits were assigned to the treatments. Peel colour change from green to yellow is a result of chlorophyll degradation and is the most important eating criterion used by consumers to determine fruit ripening  and .

The results of the current study showed significant differences among the different ripening methods for attaining stage 6, the acceptable stage of peel colouration for consumers . Fruits ripened using smoking from kerosene burning attained the acceptable peel colour change after six days of storage followed by bananas treated with moring a leaf with a mean of 6.17 days after storage. The difference between the smoking and moringa treatments was not significant. Fruits ripened using ripened tomato was the slowest  to reach stage six . The results are in agreement with  and  who used smoke from kerosene and straw respectively. Similarly, reported faster peel colour change of fruits treated with kerosene smoking compared to ethrel treated related the faster colour change in smoke-treated banana fruits to increased temperature from the kerosene burner in addition to ethylene.