Abstract
Every year and all over the world the fungal decay of fresh fruit and vegetables frequently generates substantial economic losses. Synthetic fungicides, traditionally used to efficiently combat the putrefactive agents, emerged, however, as the cause of environmental and human health issues. Given the need to seek for alternatives, several biological approaches were followed, among which those with killer yeasts stand out. Here, after the elaboration of the complex of problems, we explain the hitherto known yeast killer mechanisms and present the implementation of yeasts displaying such phenotype in biocontrol strategies for pre- or postharvest treatments to be aimed at combating postharvest fungal decay in numerous agricultural products.
Highlights
Postharvest fungal diseases of fruit and vegetables cause major crop losses ranging from 25% in industrialized up to 50% in developing countries [1]
Since prevention is better than cure, postharvest disease control should start at best prior to the actual harvesting process, not least owing to the fact that numerous potential pathogens are capable of performing a latent infection
For subtropical fruit—among them mangoes, papaya, and bananas—protective fungicide sprays are systematically used to battle against the anthracnose disease elicited by Colletotrichum gloeosporioides [17]
Summary
Postharvest fungal diseases of fruit and vegetables cause major crop losses ranging from 25% in industrialized up to 50% in developing countries [1]. Concern is continuously rising over their routine use because, besides threatening human health [2,3,4] and the environment [5], resistant fungal pathogenic biotypes concomitantly arose [6,7,8]. It is, not surprising that a number of countries, such as the USA and those that form the European Union, promote a project called “Integrated Pest Management (IPM)” which aims at reducing or, whenever possible, completely replacing chemical pesticides [9,10,11,12,13,14]
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