Review of the Impact of Apple Fruit Ripening, Texture and Chemical Contents on Genetically Determined Susceptibility to Storage Rots

Fungal storage rots like blue mould, grey mould, bull’s eye rot, bitter rot and brown rot destroy large amounts of the harvested apple crop around the world. Application of fungicides is nowadays severely restricted in many countries and production systems, and these problems are therefore likely to increase. Considerable variation among apple cultivars in resistance/susceptibility has been reported, suggesting that efficient defence mechanisms can be selected for and used in plant breeding. These are, however, likely to vary between pathogens, since some fungi are mainly wound-mediated while others attack through lenticels or by infecting blossoms. Since mature fruits are considerably more susceptible than immature fruits, mechanisms involving fruit-ripening processes are likely to play an important role. Significant associations have been detected between the susceptibility to rots in harvested fruit and various fruit maturation-related traits like ripening time, fruit firmness at harvest and rate of fruit softening during storage, as well as fruit biochemical contents like acidity, sugars and polyphenols. Some sources of resistance to blue mould have been described, but more research is needed on the development of spore inoculation methods that produce reproducible data and can be used for large screenings, especially for lenticel-infecting fungi.

Salicylic acid and jasmonic acid can suppress green and blue moulds of citrus fruit and induce the activity of polyphenol oxidase and peroxidase

The ability of salicylic acid and jasmonic acid to suppress post-harvest infection with green mould Penicillium digitatum and blue mould P. italicum on three citrus species Citrus reticulata ‘Kinnow’, C. limon ‘Meyer Lemon’, and C. limetta ‘Mosambi’ was evaluated in a dose-response study. Salicylic acid (SA) and jasmonic acid (JA) were applied to the fruits as a post-harvest dip treatment followed by wound inoculation with the pathogens. Both resistance inducers caused a significantly lower disease severity compared with the infected but non-treated control, whereas disease incidence was not significantly lower than in the control. The efficacy of both SA and JA in reducing disease severity was concentration-dependent; the use of higher concentrations resulted in a greater degree of suppression. All the Citrus species tested in this study showed different responses in terms of disease development. C. limon ‘Meyer Lemon’ showed the highest disease development, and C. limetta ‘Mosambi’ the lowest. To get an insight into the mechanisms underlying the increase in resistance, the activity of defence-related enzymes – peroxidase (POD) and polyphenol oxidase (PPO) – was recorded in SA- and JA-treated fruit peelings. The activity of both enzymes was directly proportional to the concentration of the SA and JA applications. The highest activity of PPO and POD was observed in C. reticulata ‘Kinnow’ and the lowest in C. limon ‘Meyer Lemon’ fruits. This study is the first to document an increase in the activity of PPO and POD in SA- and JA-treated Citrus species in the presence of blue mould and green mould pathogens.