Elsevier

Scientia Horticulturae

Volume 189, 25 June 2015, Pages 74-80
Scientia Horticulturae

Hot air treatment induces resistance against blue mold decay caused by Penicillium expansum in sweet cherry (Prunus cerasus L.) fruit

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scienta.2015.03.039Get rights and content

Highlights

  • Hot air treatment efficiently inhibited blue mold rot caused by Penicillium expansum in sweet cherry fruit.

  • Hot air treatment significantly induced defense-related enzymes in sweet cherry fruit.

  • Hot air treatment remarkably up-regulated the expression of defensive genes.

  • Hot air treatment effectively inhibited activities of polygalacturonase and pectinmethylesterase.

Abstract

Effect of hot air (HA) treatment (44 °C, 114 min) on reducing blue mold decay caused by Penicillium expansum in sweet cherry fruit was investigated. The results indicated that fruit treated with HA had significantly lower disease incidence and smaller lesion diameter than the control fruit did. HA treatment significantly enhanced activities of chitinase (CHI) and β-1, 3-glucanase (GLU). The activities of polygalacturonase (PG) and pectinmethylesterase (PME) were significantly inhibited by HA treatment. Fruit treated with HA exhibited remarkably higher activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT), peroxidase (POD), and polyphenoloxidase (PPO) and lower activity of ascorbate peroxidase (APX) than control. Expression of defense related genes such as PaGLU, PaCAT, and PaNPR1-like was greatly induced in HA-treated fruit during storage, while the expression of expansins (EXP) was down-regulated by HA treatment. These results suggest that HA can effectively inhibit blue mold decay caused by P. expansum in harvested cherry fruit possibly by directly inducing disease resistance and delaying fruit tissue softening that helps to ward off the spread of pathogens.

Introduction

Sweet cherry (Prunus avium L.) is highly susceptible to pathogenic infection causing decay and large postharvest loss (Al-Haq et al., 2002, Feliziani et al., 2013). Blue mold decay caused by Penicillium expansum Link is one of the most important postharvest diseases in sweet cherry fruit (Ceponis et al., 1987). Traditionally, the control of postharvest diseases of fruits relies mainly on the use of synthetic fungicides. However, the intense use of synthetic fungicides has led to the increasing resistance of fungal pathogens and growing concern of consumers over chemical residues (Janisiewicz and Korsten, 2002, Yu et al., 2014). Therefore, it is crucial to study eco-friendly alternative strategies to inhibit postharvest fungal decay (Droby et al., 2009).

Heat treatments, including hot air (HA) treatment, hot water dipping and hot water vapor, which are more feasible for commercial application to reduce fruit decay, delay ripening and maintain quality (Jin et al., 2014, Lurie, 1998). Among the three methods, hot air treatment has received much attention and has been widely used to control fruit decay and maintain quality. It has been reported that hot air treatment was applied effectively to reduce postharvest decay in various fruits including apple, peach and Chinese bayberry fruit (Conway et al., 2004, Wang et al., 2010, Zhang et al., 2007). In addition, HA treatment has been shown not only to limit spore germination of pathogens in vitro (Schirra et al., 2002, Zhang et al., 2007), but also induce resistance of fruit against fungal infection (Liu et al., 2010, Wang et al., 2010), thereby inhibiting decay incidence in postharvest fruit. However, there is no information concerning the effect of HA on controlling blue mold decay in sweet cherry fruit.

The objective of this study was to evaluate the effect of HA treatment on controlling blue mold decay caused by P. expansum in sweet cherry fruit and to explore the possible mechanisms involved.

Section snippets

Fungal pathogen

The pathogen P. expansum was isolated from infected sweet cherry fruit and cultured on potato dextrose agar (PDA) medium (containing the extract of 200 g boiled potatoes, 20 g dextrose and 20 g agar in 1000 mL of distilled water). Spore suspensions were prepared from 2-week-old PDA cultures. The spores were removed from the surface of the cultures and suspended in 5 mL of sterile distilled water containing 0.05% (v/v) Tween 80. The number of spores was determined with a hemocytometer counting

Effect of HA treatment on disease incidence and lesion diameter of sweet cherry fruit inoculated with P. expansum

As shown in Fig. 1, HA treatment significantly reduced disease incidence and lesion diameter in sweet cherry fruit inoculated with P. expansum. HA treatment reduced disease incidence and lesion diameter, respectively, by 11.0% and 32.9% on the 3rd day of inoculation compared with the control. Although all the inoculated wounds in both HA-treated and control fruit developed decay symptoms after five days of inoculation at 20 °C, the lesion diameter in HA-treated fruit was still significantly (p < 

Discussion

Heat treatment has been widely used to prevent fungal decay, delay ripening, increase tolerance to chilling injury and extend postharvest life of fruits and vegetables (Jin et al., 2014, Paull and Chen, 2000). In the present study, we found that HA treatment significantly reduced blue mold decay incidence and lesion diameter of cherry fruit inoculated with P. expansum. These results suggest that HA treatment, as a physical method, enhanced disease resistance of sweet cherry fruit.

Induced

Acknowledgments

This study was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 31172003 and 31301565), the Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (ZR2012CQ009) and Postgraduate Innovation Project of Jiangsu Province (CXLX13_266).

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