Abstract
Patulin is a secondary metabolite produced primarily by the fungus Penicillium expansum, responsible for the blue mold disease on apples. It is found in apple products including apple cider when apple juice is added after fermentation. In the present study, two hundred and twenty-five cider-apples of the variety “Bedan”, cultivated in Brittany in France, were sampled from the orchard during harvesting until the storage step, right before processing. The patulin analysis on these samples reported a low contamination at the orchard and a significantly higher-level of contamination in the cider-apples starting from the transporting bin. The percentage of positive samples increased from 6% to 47% after 12 h in the harvesting bin before transporting and reached 95% after 24 h of transporting, decreasing then to 69% at the end of the storage. Penicillium expansum was quantified on the surface of apples using real-time PCR and was observed to be mostly consistent between the harvest and post-harvest steps. It was detected on average, on the surface of 85% of all sampled apples with a mean value around 2.35 × 106 Penicillium expansum DNA/g of apple. Moreover, the changes in the fungal and bacterial epiphytic microbiota in the different steps were studied using a metabarcoding approach. The alpha and beta diversity analysis revealed the presence of unique and more diverse bacterial and fungal communities on the surface of apples picked from the orchard compared to the rest of the sampling steps. Potential indigenous biological control agents were identified on the surface of sampled apples. Future perspective includes developing actions of prevention and control of the contamination by Penicillium expansum during the harvest and along the various critical post-harvest stages before transformation in a sustainable development concern.
Highlights
“French cider” is a fermented alcoholic beverage made from apple juice, mainly produced in the northwest of France [1]
The bacteria population counts for all samples were consistently higher than those of molds and yeasts with high numbers of culturable bacteria ranging from 107 CFU/g of apple in the orchard to 105 log CFU/g of apple in the storage silo
Liu et al investigated the impact on the apple endophytic microbiota of different rootstock/scion combinations, suggesting that the latter has a possible effect on the composition of the microbial community [30]
Summary
“French cider” is a fermented alcoholic beverage made from apple juice, mainly produced in the northwest of France [1]. French apple cider is traditionally not regarded as a potentially hazardous food because of its high content in organic acids, mainly lactic acid (3–4 g/L), generating pH levels between 3.3–4.0. Among the species of this genera, Penicillium expansum (P. expansum) is the main producer of patulin and is considered an important pre-harvest and post-harvest contaminant of apples worldwide [5]. Most microbiome studies associated with apples have mainly focused on the evaluation of the microbial diversity at a single post-harvest point To this day, little is known about the diversity of the epiphytic microbiome associated with apples used to produce cider. The study of cider-apple microbiome in post-harvest stages is a promising, under-used tool to better understand the phenomena regulating the contamination by P. expansum and patulin production
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