Low Oxygen Storage Improves Tomato Postharvest Cold Tolerance, Especially for Tomatoes Cultivated with Far-Red LED Light

Fahrizal Yusuf Affandi,Julian C Verdonk,Maxence J M Paillart,Rob E Schouten,Jan A Verschoor,Ernst J Woltering

doi:10.3390/foods10081699

Fahrizal Yusuf Affandi, Julian C Verdonk + Show 4 more

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https://doi.org/10.3390/foods10081699

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Abstract

We investigated the effects of low oxygen storage on chilling injury development, colour development, respiration and H2O2 levels of ‘Merlice’ tomatoes cultivated with and without far red (FR) LED lighting during 20 days of shelf-life. Mature green (MG) and red (R) tomatoes were stored at 2 °C in combination with 0.5, 2.5, 5 and 21 kPa O2 for 15 days (experiment 1). MG tomatoes cultivated under either white LED or white LED light with FR LED light were stored at 2 °C in combination with 1, 5 and 21 O2 kPa for 14 days (experiment 2). Chilled MG and R tomatoes from experiment 1 showed decay, firmness loss and higher weight loss during shelf-life which were reduced under low oxygen conditions. FR during cultivation improved chilling tolerance of MG tomatoes. Fastest colour development and lowest respiration rate during shelf-life were observed for MG fruit cultivated with FR lighting prior to storage at 1 kPa O2/0 kPa CO2. H2O2 levels during the shelf-life were not affected during cold storage. The improved cold tolerance of MG tomatoes cultivated with FR lighting is likely due to lower oxygen uptake that led to both higher lycopene synthesis and less softening.

Highlights

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) is a chilling sensitive fruit that will develop a disorder called chilling injury (CI) when exposed to low, but above freezing temperatures [1].Chilling stress disrupts metabolic processes and causes alterations in membrane fluidity, followed by an increase in reactive oxygen species (ROS) production
Model estimation results illustrate that the spatial lag model (SLM) can be chosen to estimate the spatial relationship between the variables (Table 4)
LM test results showed that R-LMLAG was more significant than R-LMERROR

Summary

Introduction

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) is a chilling sensitive fruit that will develop a disorder called chilling injury (CI) when exposed to low, but above freezing temperatures [1]. Chilling stress disrupts metabolic processes and causes alterations in membrane fluidity, followed by an increase in reactive oxygen species (ROS) production. Low enzymatic activity causes reduced ROS scavenging, which promotes development of CI symptoms [2,3,4]. CI symptoms in tomatoes include surface pitting, interrupted pigment (lycopene) synthesis, rapid softening, loss of aroma and production of off-flavours, as well as increased susceptibility to fungal infection [5,6]. CI symptoms usually become visible during a shelf-life period after fruits have been exposure to chilling temperatures [5,6,7]. Controlled atmosphere (CA) storage and Modified Atmosphere Packaging (MAP) have been shown to reduce CI in mango, Japanese plum, guava, avocado and persimmon [8,9,10,11,12,13]

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