Reduction of chilling injury and transcript accumulation of heat shock proteins in tomato fruit by methyl jasmonate and methyl salicylate

Using jasmonates and salicylates to reduce losses within the fruit supply chain

“…The positive response was already observed after 3 days of storage at 25 °C [78] with a significant reduction in disease incidence in tomato fruit inoculated with B. cinerea, probably due to fast growth of this fungus at high temperature in control samples. In tomatoes stored at 12-13 °C [41,79] and 5 °C [76,77] reduced decay was not noticed until 9 th and 21 st day of storage, respectively.…”

“…Reduced decay due to reduced chilling injury Reduced decay in fresh produce treated with jasmonates or salicylates is often associated with reduced chilling injury, as reported for mangos treated with MeJA at 10 and 100 µmol l -1 stored at 5 °C [40], tomatoes treated with MeJA or MeSA at 10 µmol l -1 for 16 h stored at 5 °C [76,77], peaches dipped in SA at 1000 µmol l -1 for 5 min stored at 0 °C [49] or Qingnai plums dipped in SA at 1500 µmol l -1 for 10 min stored at 1 °C [24]. One key issue with chilling injured fruit is the textural quality loss due to alterations in membrane structure [15], making the produce more susceptible to rots and decay.…”

“…In the case of tomatoes, decay was reduced when produce was treated with MeJA at 10 µmol l -1 [76,77], 100 µmol l -1 [77,78], and 200 µmol l -1 [41,79,80] or with MeSA at 10 and 100 µmol l -1 [76,77]. The positive response was already observed after 3 days of storage at 25 °C [78] with a significant reduction in disease incidence in tomato fruit inoculated with B. cinerea, probably due to fast growth of this fungus at high temperature in control samples.…”

“…Overall visual quality was also improved in strawberries treated with MeJA at 100 µmol l -1 , stored at 7.5 °C [22] or treated with SA at 2000 µmol l -1 [35], in banana dipped in MeJA at 100 µmol l -1 for 30 min, subsequently stored at 7 °C [96], in grapefruit dipped in JA at 10 and 50 µmol l -1 for 30 s, stored at 2 °C plus shelf-life at 20 °C [19], in tomatoes treated with MeSA or MeJA at 10 µmol l -1 for 16 h, stored at 5 °C plus shelf-life at 20 °C [76] or treated with MeSA at 100 µmol l -1 [105], and bell peppers treated with MeJA and MeSA at 100 µmol l -1 , stored at 0 °C [106]. The majority of these positive responses were associated with the ability of jasmonates and salicylates to prevent chilling injury and/or decay in the produce, which is a welldocumented phenomenon of these compounds [49,56,95,97,107].…”

Alleviation of postharvest chilling injury of tomato fruit by salicylic acid treatment

“…SA can alleviate postharvest chilling injury in fruit and vegetables via different mechanism such as enhance alternative oxidase (AOX) gene expression as a ROS avoidance gene in tomato fruit (Fung et al 2006), increase ascorbate peroxidase (APX) and glutathione reductase (GR) activities and reduced-to-oxidized ascorbate ratio (AsA/DHAsA) and reduced-to-oxidized glutathione ratio (GSH/GSSG) in peach fruit ) and enhance heat shock proteins (HSPs) in tomato (Ding et al 2001) and peach fruit .…”