Impact of chilling injury on global trade in tropical products

Abstract

Abstract International trade in fresh products is dominated by products capable of long-term refrigerated storage, allowing marketing flexibility. For tropical products, postharvest chilling injury (PCI) is a barrier to long-term storage that limits trade by exacerbating the already-challenging requirements to minimise physical or biotic damage to products. In this review, the practical consequences of PCI in terms of international trade are described. Options for choosing to grow more resistant varieties or to predict the chilling injury risk of batches of fresh products can reduce overall losses by allowing better-informed sequencing of product marketing. Recent advances in technologies that reduce PCI risk or predict its severity, some of which can be used before harvest, are reviewed. At a more fundamental level, there is a growing number of excellent reviews on the potential for gene editing to alleviate postharvest chilling injury in tropical fruits and vegetables. Most are focused on research into ways to alleviate the consequences of chilling injury: i.e. oxidative stress arising from membrane dysfunction. A few recent reports show that reducing membrane dysfunction itself is possible, for example by increasing desaturation of membrane lipids, but this approach comes with a new and predictable problem: increased preharvest susceptibility to heat stress. Refined suggestions for strategies that could produce durable improvements in product quality hold the potential for significant increases in global trade with resulting economic benefits, particularly for developing countries.