Abstract
Chinese jujube is among the important medicinal plants grown in Iran. Its valuable fruit have a short post-harvest life. Delaying of quality reduction for few days can help maintaining the shelf life of fresh jujube fruit. The current study was conducted to investigate the possible effects of pre-harvest foliar application of salicylic acid (0, 2 and 4 mM) and calcium nitrate (0, 1 and 2%) on physico-chemical characteristics and shelf life of fresh jujube fruit during storage at 10-days intervals, for 40 days. Results indicated that salicylic acid and calcium nitrate played an important role in maintaining and extending post-harvest quality of fresh jujube fruit, as both substances increased fruit firmness, titrable acidity, total phenolic content, antioxidant activity, ascorbic acid and catalase enzyme, but reducing total soluble solids. The highest total phenolic content (2.38 µg gallic acid/gFW), antioxidant activity (76.73 mmolTrolox/g), ascorbic acid (222.4 mg/100g FW) and catalase enzyme (16.67 U. mg-1 protein), as well as the lowest total soluble solids content (23.11%) were observed when salicylic acid 4 mM was used. Furthermore, maximum fruit firmness (4.22 N) was obtained in the treatment containing calcium nitrate 2%. Treatment containing salicylic acid 2 mM and calcium nitrate 2% had the highest amount of titrable acidity TA (0.45 %). Based on the results, reducing trends of some components like ascorbic acid, antioxidant and phenol, were very fast, even when using salicylic acid and calcium nitrate; their application could cause a delay in these processes, but the quality reduction found could not be compensated. In other characteristics that had a slower quality reducing trend, the application of salicylic acid and calcium nitrate could cause at least a 10-day delay in the reduction of the amounts of these attributes. In press: Online First articles have been peer reviewed, accepted for publication and published online without pagination. They will receive pagination when the issue will be ready for publishing as a complete number. After the pagination, the articles will be included in Volume 45, Issue 1, 2017. These articles are searchable and citable by they DOI (Digital Object Identifier), but DOI will become active after the articles will be included in the complete issue.
Highlights
Chinese jujube (Ziziphus jujuba Mill.), belonging to Rhamnaceae family, has been cultivated in China, the Mediterranean region, southern and eastern parts of Asia, some regions of North Italy, west and south of Turkey (Kirkbride et al, 2006; Ercisli et al, 2007; Ecevit et al, 2008; Gao et al, 2013) and Iran, especially in Southern Khorasan province from long ago.Being one of the important medicinal plants, Jujube fruit is grown in arid and semi-arid regions, in temperate and subtropical regions (Liu and Zhao, 2009)
Total soluble solids (TSS) Increase in shelf life duration led to the increase in total soluble solids (TSS), so that the highest and the lowest amounts of TSS were obtained at 40th day (26.92%) and zero until the 20th day (22.4822.63%), respectively (Table 1)
Increase in soluble solids and soluble sugar during the period of fruit ripening may be due to the activity of sucrose-phosphate synthase enzyme (SPS), which is an important enzyme in the biosynthesis of sugars (Hubbard et al, 1991)
Summary
Being one of the important medicinal plants, Jujube fruit is grown in arid and semi-arid regions, in temperate and subtropical regions (Liu and Zhao, 2009) It is one of the world's most nutritious plants, rich in vitamin C, minerals and amino acids (Li et al, 2007; Boora and Bal, 2008) and contains various types of bioactive substances such as triterpenic acid, volatileoil, glycosides, saponins and flavonoids that have wide pharmacological effects on humans (Zhao et al, 2008; Ji et al, 2017). It is used as table fruit, dry fruit and medicinal plant. Any efforts that could be made to produce fruits with high quality parameters such as firmness, color intensity, fruit uniformity and increase of ascorbic acid, total phenolic and total antioxidant activity at harvest and during marketing, would be very important for the jujube growers in order to obtain higher return of resources
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