Abstract
Superficial scald is one of the most serious postharvest physiological disorders that can affect apples after a prolonged cold storage period. This study investigated the impact of pre- and post-harvest climatic variations on superficial scald in a susceptible apple cultivar. Fruit batches with contrasting phenotypes for superficial scald incidence were identified among several years of “Granny Smith” fruit production. The “low scald” year pre-harvest climate was characterised by a warm period followed by a sudden decrease in temperature, playing the part of an in vivo acclimation to cold storage. This was associated with many abiotic stress responsive genes which were induced in fruit peel. In particular 48 Heat Shock Proteins (HSPs) and 5 Heat Shock transcription Factors (HSFs) were strongly induced at harvest when scald incidence was low. For “high scald” year, a post-harvest acclimation of 1 week was efficient in reducing scald incidence. Expression profiles of stress related genes were affected by the acclimation treatment and indicate fruit physiological adaptations to cold storage. The identified stress-responsive genes, and in particular HSPs, could be useful indicators of the fruit physiological status to predict the risk of scald occurrence as early as harvest.
Highlights
Superficial scald is one of the most serious postharvest physiological disorders that can affect apples after a prolonged cold storage period
In particular in 2014 no symptom was detected on late H3 fruit, while 25% and 52% of the early H1 fruit, and 12% and 13% of the optimum H2 fruit were affected by scald (Fig. 1b)
Post-harvest thermotherapy treatments, which are short intense heat shock, are currently under evaluation in order to reduce post-harvest fungal infections. The success of this strategy supposes a non-antagonistic effect on other post-harvest disorders such as superficial scald
Summary
Superficial scald is one of the most serious postharvest physiological disorders that can affect apples after a prolonged cold storage period. The “low scald” year pre-harvest climate was characterised by a warm period followed by a sudden decrease in temperature, playing the part of an in vivo acclimation to cold storage. This was associated with many abiotic stress responsive genes which were induced in fruit peel. The development of superficial scald symptoms is assumed to be an oxidative response due to cold stress during storage and the accumulation of oxidative products in apple peel[3]. Based on the same idea, one experiment with step-wise cooling of harvest fruit has shown to reduce scald development for ‘Granny Smith’[17]
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