Effect of a combination of nitric oxide treatment and intermittent warming
on prevention of chilling injury of ‘Feicheng’ peach fruit during storage
Li-Qin Zhu
b
, Jie Zhou
a,
*
, Shu-Hua Zhu
a
a
College of Chemistry and Material Science, Shandong Agricultural University, Taian, Shandong 271018, People’s Republic of China
b
College of Horticulture Science and Engineering, Shandong Agricultural University, Taian, Shandong 271018, People’s Republic of China
article info
Article history:
Received 15 June 2009
Received in revised form 11 October 2009
Accepted 9 December 2009
Keywords:
Chilling injury
Nitric oxide
Intermittent warming
Cell wall metabolism
abstract
Effects of fumigation with 15
l
ll
À1
of nitric oxide gas (NO), intermittent warming (IW) and a combina-
tion of NO and IW (NO + IW) in preventing chilling injury of ‘Feicheng’ peaches were investigated. Chill-
ing injury index, firmness, ethylene production, cell wall fractions and cell wall metabolism-associated
enzymes were evaluated. These results indicated that three treatments significantly prevented the meal-
iness of ‘Feicheng’ peaches. Further, NO fumigation could counteract the side effect of IW. Trans-1,2-
diaminocyclohexane – N,N,N
0
,N
0
-tetraacetic acid (CDTA)-soluble fractions in control peaches significantly
increased, but maintained lower contents in the three treatments. IW obviously increased the activity of
polygalacturonase (PG) and endo-1,4-glucanase. NO fumigation preserved lower PG activity in early
20 days of storage, and endo-PG activity was significantly higher than that of control peaches during
the later storage time. Exo-PG and endo-PG activity of the fruits treated with NO + IW was midway
between those single treatments with NO and IW.
Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
1. Introduction
Chilling injury (CI) is a major factor limiting the storage life of
peaches at low temperature. Peaches often show chilling injury
symptoms, such as mealiness (lack of juice), internal browning
and loss of flavour (Lill, O’Donoghue, & King, 1989; Lurie & Crisosto,
2005) when they are stored at 0–5 °C within 2 or 3 weeks. ‘Feich-
eng’ peach is a traditional speciality cultivar in China, with a large
demand from both domestic and foreign markets. At low temper-
ature storage, mealiness is a major problem of ‘Feicheng’ peaches.
As mealy fruits lack juice and are unacceptable to consumers, this
possibly leads to serious economical consequences for the peach
fruit industry.
Cell wall compositional changes associated with mealiness are
different from the generic ones during normal ripening. It is ac-
cepted that the mealiness occurring is associated with abnormal
modifications in the activity of cell wall-degrading enzymes, gen-
erally leading to alterations in pectin metabolism (Brummell, Dal
Cin, Lurie, Crisosto, & Labavitch, 2004; Lurie & Crisosto, 2005). Pol-
ygalacturonase (PG) and pectin methylesterase (PE) are two impor-
tant enzymes associated with pectin degradation. Extensive
researches have been conducted to understand the mechanism of
mealiness, which should be attributed to the imbalance between
PG and PE (Zhou, Ben-Arie, & Lurie, 2000; Zhou et al., 2000). Under
this imbalance of PG and PE, free water, aided by cell wall calcium
and magnesium, is trapped into a gel, leading to less ‘free juice’,
that is mealiness symptoms. Exo-PG and endo-PG activities are
reduced in mealy fruits (Zhou et al., 2000), and PE activity is found
to increase (Ben Arie & Sonego, 1980) or remain unchanged (Zhou
et al., 2000) in mealy peaches. Endo-1,4-glucanase (EGase) activity
is an important participant in the process of mealiness. EGase
activity and mRNA in peaches increase following cold temperature
storage, and the treatments delaying the mealiness do not enhance
EGase activity (Zhou et al., 2000).
Some strategies, such as delayed storage (DS), intermittent
warming (IW) and controlled atmosphere (CA), have been applied
to preventing or alleviate chilling injury (Ben Arie & Lavee, 1971;
Fernandez-Trujillo & Artés, 1997, 1998; Murray, Lucangeli, Polenta,
& Budde, 2007; Zhou et al., 2000). IW may cause a negative effect
on peach fruits and reduce the storage life (Girardi et al., 2005).
Nitric oxide (NO) is a highly reactive free radical gas involved in
resisting vegetative stress and senescence of horticultural prod-
ucts. Short-term exposure to a low concentration of NO gas or its
donors can extend the postharvest life of various fresh fruits and
vegetables (Wills, Ku, & Leshem, 2000; Wills, Soegiarto, & Bowyer,
2007; Zhu & Zhou, 2007). However, to the best of our knowledge, it
has not been reported that NO treatment affects mealiness of
peaches or other fruits. In this study, we compared the effects of
NO, IW, and simultaneous use of NO and IW on the development
of chilling injury of ‘Feicheng’ peaches and analysed the levels of
various other quality and metabolic characteristics related to chill-
ing injury.
0308-8146/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.foodchem.2009.12.025
* Corresponding author. Tel.: +86 538 8242174; fax: +86 538 8242251.
E-mail address: zhoujie@sdau.edu.cn (J. Zhou).
Food Chemistry 121 (2010) 165–170
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