Freezing effect on some quality parameters of transgenic parthenocarpic eggplants

Abstract

Parthenocarpy is the development of fruits in the absence of fertilization. It confers advantages to horticultural crops; the most important are fruit production under adverse environmental conditions and seedless fruits. Parthenocarpy has been obtained in eggplant by genetic engineering using a chimeric gene and an ovule-specific promoter which allows the plant to increase the content and/or the activity of indol-3-acetic acid. Two transgenic hybrids, P1 and P2, were compared with the corresponding control hybrids C1 and C2 in open field. All parthenocarpic hybrids were seedless, so increasing fruit quality. In order to evaluate the quality of transgenic eggplants, particularly their suitability for freezing, analyses on colour, texture and pectic composition were carried out on raw fruits and after 15 months of frozen storage at −20 °C. Fresh and frozen parthenocarpic eggplants showed a slower browning of the pulp with respect to the controls. Texture data showed a higher decrease of firmness for the transgenic, while pectin analysis suggests that there are lower molecular weight fragments in the transgenic eggplants than in the controls.