The effect of harpin on shelf life of peppers inoculated with Botrytis cinerea

Abstract

The preservation methods as an alternative to chemical control to prevent postharvest quality losses of peppers were examined. The efficacy of harpin treatments on peppers (Capsicum annuum L. cvs. 'Demre', 'Yalova Charleston' and 'Sari Sivri') was tested in the same conditions in two different years. Peppers grown in greenhouse were applied with four treatments consisting of harpin, Botrytis cinerea, harpin+B. cinerea and control. The harpin in B. cinerea treatments reduced the percentage of rotten fruit in cv. 'Demre' from 42.68% to 22.85%, in cv. 'Yalova Charleston' from 60.87% to 26.59% and in cv. 'Sari Sivri' from 32.83% to 12.82%. The harpin and harpin+B. cinerea peppers had a better overall appearance at the end of shelf-life. Changes in percentage of red fruit and fruit color at the end of shelf life proceeded more slowly in the harpin treated fruit. The treatments of harpin gave the best results in all three cultivars. Moreover, the values obtained from fruits subjected to harpin+B. cinerea were better than those of the fruits picked from the plants only subjected to B. cinerea. In the trials, harpin slowed down the changes leading to quality loss in fruits, in all cultivars. Thus, the positive effect of harpin was revealed more clearly especially in the fruits picked from the inoculated plants.

Combining an antagonistic yeast with harpin treatment to control postharvest decay of kiwifruit

“…Harpin, as a HR elicitor, can activate defense response in many plants including commercially important horticultural crops (Akbudak et al, 2006;de Capdeville et al, 2003;Fonseca et al, 2009;Taylor, 2006;Tezcan et al, 2013;Wei et al, 1998). In the current study, harpin at the concentrations from 60 to 120 mg/l (these concentrations did not have direct inhibitory effect on in vitro growth of B. cinerea or P. expansum (data not shown), and was effective in controlling gray mold (B. cinerea) and blue mold (P. expansum) on kiwifruit (Fig.…”

“…As a hypersensitive response (HR) elicitor, harpin is an acidic, heat-stable, glycinerich protein, encoded by the hrp gene of Erwinia amylovora (Wei et al, 1992). Harpin could elicit HR in Arabidopsis and tobacco leaves (Ger et al, 2014;Li et al, 2013), as well as induce defense response/improve shelf life of fruits and vegetables like apple (de Capdeville et al, 2003), peach (Taylor, 2006), melon (Yang et al, 2005), tomato (Akbudak et al, 2006), jujube (Li et al, 2012), lettuce (Fonseca et al, 2009) and pepper (Tezcan et al, 2013).…”