Improvement of microwave treatment with immersion of fruit in water to control brown rot in stone fruit
2014
Sisquella, María | Picouet, Pierre | Viñas, Inmaculada | Teixidó, Neus | Segarra, Juan | Usall, Josep
Monilinia spp. are the most important cause of brown rot in stone fruit. Currently, no chemical fungicides are allowed in the European Union to be applied in stone fruit after harvest. Microwave (MW) treatments at 20kW with fruit immersed in water at 40°C for 50 or 60s were selected as effective conditions to control brown rot without affecting the appearance of the fruit. The efficacy of the treatments was analyzed on fruit with different weights and at various infection times and inoculum concentrations. When the MW treatment was applied for 50s, brown rot control was significantly higher for smaller fruit in comparison with larger fruit and MW efficacy decreased with increasing time between inoculation and treatment from 0 or 24h to 48h and inoculum concentration from 103 to 105conidiamL−1. When the treatment time was increased to 60s, a better control of brown rot was observed and, in general, none of the studied factors had a significant effect on the efficacy of the treatment. MW treatments were also evaluated on naturally infected fruit; brown rot incidence was significantly reduced to less than 43% when MW treatment was applied for 50s and to less than 7% when applied for 60s.This study demonstrated the efficacy of MW treatment to control brown rot in postharvest of stone fruit. A relationship between brown rot reduction and the applied MW energy was also provided, which could be useful for designing specific equipment to process large quantities of fruit in less time without affecting the efficacy of the treatment or the quality of the fruit.
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