Relationship between Damages and other Postharvest Stress Factors Affecting Quality of Fruit and Vegetables

Abstract

Stress is the main concern hindering the maintenance of postharvest quality of fruit and vegetables. From production to consumption, fruit and vegetables are subjected to various handling activities in which some of these activities result in damaging commodity which make them susceptible to stress through entire post-harvest period. Stresses mostly come from biological and environmental factors such as harvest conditions, temperature, relative humidity, and gas composition of storage environment, as well as metabolic activities and microbial infections which all correlate with damages for one way or another and bring about quality loss and shortening of commodity’s shelf life. While the most common type of damages arises during harvesting, handling and transportation is mechanical or physical damage, freezing, chilling and heat injuries are commonly occurred during storage from improper temperature management mainly for crops derived from subtropical and tropical growing regions. All these damages are believed to promote postharvest stresses and be the crucial cause of destruction of plant tissues and comprises total bruising, crushing and rupturing of fruit and vegetables during storage. Taking an example of mechanical damages, they influence respiration rates, ethylene production and loss of moisture in fresh produce and become more susceptible to microbial decay resulting in produce’s quality losses during storage whereas, freezing and chilling injuries also induce much more other physiological disorders associated to oxidative stresses and the later cause immediate collapse of the tissues and total loss of cellular integrity, surface pitting, internal browning and accelerated softening and decay appearance in stored produce.