Abstract
Green-ripe banana fruit are sensitive to chilling injury (CI) and, thus, prone to postharvest quality losses. Early detection of CI facilitates quality maintenance and extends shelf life. CI affects all metabolic levels, with membranes and, consequently, photosynthesis being primary targets. Optical techniques such as chlorophyll a fluorescence analysis (CFA) and spectroscopy are promising tools to evaluate CI effects in photosynthetically active produce. Results obtained on bananas are, however, largely equivocal. This results from the lack of a rigorous evaluation of chilling impacts on the various aspects of photosynthesis. Continuous and modulated CFA and imaging (CFI), and VIS remission spectroscopy (VRS) were concomitantly applied to noninvasively and comprehensively monitor photosynthetically relevant effects of low temperatures (5 °C, 10 °C, 11.5 °C and 13 °C). Detailed analyses of chilling-related variations in photosynthetic activity and photoprotection, and in contents of relevant pigments in green-ripe bananas, helped to better understand the physiological changes occurring during CI, highlighting that distinct CFA and VRS parameters comprehensively reflect various effects of chilling on fruit photosynthesis. They revealed why not all CFA parameters can be applied meaningfully for early detection of chilling effects. This study provides relevant requisites for improving CI monitoring and prediction.
Highlights
After harvest, fresh fruit and vegetables are highly physiologically active and perishable products
Irrespective of the device used, the basic fluorescence parameters Fm and Fv, and especially F0 remained approx. constant during the entire cold storage in controls (13 ◦ C) and in fruit stored at 11.5 ◦ C and rapidly declined completely during simulated shelf-life (Figure 2)
At 10 ◦ C and, more pronounced, at 5 ◦ C, these parameters continuously declined during cold storage and, again very rapidly in shelf life, as measured with both CFA and imaging (CFI) and with the FluorPen
Summary
Fresh fruit and vegetables are highly physiologically active and perishable products Continued metabolic processes such as transpiration or respiration may significantly affect their quality, shortening shelf life. Subtropical and/or tropical fruits and vegetables are very sensitive to these low temperatures (
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