The present study aimed to find out the effects of different fruit maturities and heat pretreatments before storage on the quality of climacteric avocado fruit during low temperature storage. Two local cultivars, \u27Chanan\u27 and \u27Ching?Jin 2\u27, were chosen to analyze the relationship between the degree of fruit maturity at harvest and the quality of the fruits after low temperature (1℃) storage. Quality changes were observed in terms of color of skin, color of flesh, fruit hardiness, chilling injury and rottenness. Fruits of high maturity at harvest showed better storage quality in the two cultivars. Under the storage temperature of 1 ℃, fruit can be stored for 21 days for \u27Chanan\u27 and for 14 days for \u27Ching?Jin 2\u27 , and retained fully ripening quality after three days of ripening treatment at 21℃. Pretreatments of fruits were conducted by immersion of them in 38℃ water for 5, 15, 30 and 60 minutes to decrease the low temperature injury on avocado during 1℃ storage. The pretreatment for 30 minutes resulted in the optimum quality of \u27Ching?Jin 2\u27 fruit after four?week?storage at 1 ℃. Post?treatment of fruit for six hours under 38 ℃ air is recommended to reduce chilling injury in \u27Chin?Jin 2\u27 avocado before the 1℃ storage. Heat shock protein HSP 70 showed highly negative correlation with the chilling injury of fruit stored at 1 ℃
