Abstract
Apples and apple-based products are among the most popular foods around the world for their delightful flavors and health benefits. However, the commonly found mold, Penicillium expansum invades wounded apples, causing the blue mold decay and ensuing the production of patulin, a mycotoxin that negatively affects human health. Patulin contamination in apple products has been a worldwide problem without a satisfactory solution yet. A comprehensive understanding of the factors and challenges associated with patulin accumulation in apples is essential for finding such a solution. This review will discuss the effects of the pathogenicity of Penicillium species, quality traits of apple cultivars, and environmental conditions on the severity of apple blue mold and patulin contamination. Moreover, beyond the complicated interactions of the three aforementioned factors, patulin control is also challenged by the lack of reliable detection methods in food matrices, as well as unclear degradation mechanisms and limited knowledge about the toxicities of the metabolites resulting from the degradations. As apple-based products are mainly produced with stored apples, pre- and post-harvest strategies are equally important for patulin mitigation. Before storage, disease-resistance breeding, orchard-management, and elicitor(s) application help control the patulin level by improving the storage qualities of apples and lowering fruit rot severity. From storage to processing, patulin mitigation strategies could benefit from the optimization of apple storage conditions, the elimination of rotten apples, and the safe and effective detoxification or biodegradation of patulin.
Highlights
The apple fruit (Malus sp., Rosaceae) is a nutrient-dense food, which is highly recommended to be included in healthy diets
Limited O2 storage failed to reduce patulin in the “Galaxy” and “Fuji Kiku” apples from Brazil [46]. These results indicated that the effect of a controlled atmosphere on patulin reduction is a complicated process, which is affected by apple cultivars and P. expansum strains, but is affected by abiotic stresses like the temperature of the storage room, the material of the apple package, and the pre-treatment of apples before the storage
The in-depth investigations of the factors and challenges associated with blue mold decay in apples and patulin accumulation in apple-products are essential in order to develop methods that can effectively reduce or remove patulin from the human dietary route
Summary
The apple fruit (Malus sp., Rosaceae) is a nutrient-dense food, which is highly recommended to be included in healthy diets. The most common postharvest pathogen is Penicillium expansum, which may jeopardize the profitability of apple producers and negatively affect human health because of the blue mold decay and the consequent production of the toxic metabolite, patulin. Conventional pasteurization only marginally reduces patulin in bottled apple juice [35] In such cases, the development of strategies to effectively control patulin contamination in apple products during processing is of great importance. Considering that patulin is often detected in apples products, factors that affect patulin production in apple fruits, conventional practices for postharvest control, and the fate of patulin during juice processing have been discussed [32,38,39,40]. This review will discuss the factors and challenges that affect patulin production and its removal from apples, as well as the emerging strategies in reducing pathogen infection and patulin contamination in apples from orchards to dining tables, with a focus on the work published in the last decade, with an aim of highlighting future prospective
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