Browning disorders in pear fruit

Role of internal atmosphere on fruit ripening and storability—a review

“…The differences in void fraction (23% for apple cortex and only 5% for pear cortex) along with the extent of network architectures of voids explained the better ability of tissues to facilitate the gas exchange in apple fruit. This lower void volume in pear fruit compared to apples as shown by Verboven et al (2008) was able to explain the earlier findings where pear fruit was found to be more sensitive to physiological disorder such as internal browning and its relation to gas exchange and the availability of internal O 2 by Lammertyn et al (2003), Franck et al (2007) and Ho et al (2008). Likewise, there is risk of developing physiological disorders in pear fruit during the course of ripening.…”

“…In this way, NO appears to control energy availability for ongoing biochemical and physiological activities. Depletion in the level of O 2 and the conditions like; hypoxia or anoxia were already reported to prevail in fruit undergoing maturation and ripening (Lammertyn et al 2003;Franck et al 2007;Ho et al 2008). So, NO-mediated sensing of O 2 and balancing its levels in fruits cannot be ruled out.…”

“…Gas exchange to a large extent depends on the arrangement pattern of cells and intercellular spaces (Mendoza et al 2007). In view of this, a very comprehensive model of gas exchange of pear fruit was proposed for explaining the development of physiological disorder such as core breakdown and its role in long-term storage of this fruit (Franck et al 2007). In the above study, the effect of the actual 3-D tissue structure of plant organs has been put forward but this could not be quantified for explaining gas exchange in plant tissues.…”

“…Later on, Verboven et al (2008) used high-resolution phase tomography (making use of synchrotron radiation) to explore the 3-D structure and cellular arrangements of pome fruit tissues in their natural state (i.e., with high water content) up to sub-micrometer resolution. For this study, pome fruits like; apple and pear were selected because their gas exchange properties have been shown to be very different and closely related to their storage lives (Schotsmans et al 2004;Ho et al 2006a, b;Franck et al 2007;Ho et al 2008). Results obtained by Verboven et al (2008) revealed very clearly that the apple fruit had more voids than pear.…”

‘Rocha’ Pears Stored Under Controlled Atmosphere With Ultra-Low and Low O2 Associated With Different Co2 Levels

“…Improper CA conditions, with high CO 2 contents inside the chamber, can lead to an even greater accumulation of this gas in the flesh, leading to an increase in the damage extent (PEDRESCHI et al, 2008). On the other hand, this damage can also occur due to the reduction in partial O 2 pressures in the storage environment (FRANCK et al, 2007).…”