Review on the controlled and modified environmental conditions towards the reduction of the chilling injury of peaches

• Autor(a) principal: Rodrigues, Cristina
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Outros Autores: Gaspar, Pedro Dinis, Simões, Maria P., Silva, Pedro Dinho da, Andrade, Luís P.
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.6/7535
• topic: Peach; Organoleptic characteristics; Chilling injury; Environmental conditions

The peach is a stone fruit with a very juicy yellow flesh, smooth skin and a taste that satisfies the most demanding palate. The quality of this fruit is usually determined by texture, appearance, scent, flavor, nutritional value and food safety. At the marketing level, there is a concern for valuing visual properties, resistance, manipulation and fruit preservability, allowing a longer lifetime and less food waste. Being the peach a very sensitive fruit, which deteriorates and ripens very quickly at environment temperature, it requires conservation in cold. This is the usual method for delaying the product deterioration, both in perception of the consumer as in nutritional value, allowing to extend its shelf life. However, this process causes the chilling injury. This damage is a physiological disturbance, induced by low temperatures, which affects the quality of the fruit, reduces its storage and shelf life and impairs the organoleptic characteristics of the peach. This paper provides a review of the studies assessing the chilling injury and evaluates its consequences on peachs, providing the ideal conservation parameters of air temperature and humidity, in order to improve or enhance organoleptic characteristics.