Calcium physiology of sweet cherry fruits
- PDF / 1,499,824 Bytes
- 11 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 3 Downloads / 214 Views
ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Calcium physiology of sweet cherry fruits Andreas Winkler1 · Bennet Fiedler1 · Moritz Knoche1 Received: 17 January 2020 / Accepted: 30 April 2020 © The Author(s) 2020
Abstract Key message Xylem functionality is the primary determinant of the Ca relations of developing sweet cherry. Calcium influx is positively related to transpiration and decreases as xylem functionality is progressively lost during development. Abstract Fruit calcium (Ca) may be associated with susceptibility to rain cracking in sweet cherry but little background information is available on the fruits’ Ca relations. The objectives of the study were to identify the key determinants of the Ca content in developing sweet cherry fruit. The masses of Ca and K in the flesh (mg per fruit) increased continuously through to maturity. However, their dry mass ratios [mg per g dry mass (DM)] decreased continuously. The decrease in Ca/ dry mass ratio was to about 30% of the transition stage II/III value, and for K to about 55%. These decreases occurred in all cultivars investigated. Moreover, the Ca mass per fruit and the Ca/dry mass ratio were normally distributed and wide ranging; the maximum recorded values were about twice the minimum ones. Within a fruit, the Ca/dry mass ratio was two to three times higher in the stem end than in the stylar scar end. Fruit held under low relative humidity (26.2%) contained more Ca per fruit and had a higher Ca/dry mass ratio compared with fruit held under high humidity (91.6%). There was a positive relationship between Ca mass per fruit and cumulative transpiration. Our results indicate xylem functionality is the primary determinant of the Ca relations of sweet cherry fruit. Keywords Prunus avium · Cracking · Uptake · Penetration · Xylem
Introduction Calcium plays an important role in the pre- and postharvest physiology of most fruit. Functions of Ca include signal transduction as a secondary messenger (Hardingham and Bading 1999; Steinhorst and Kudla 2014), the maintenance and regulation of membrane semi-permeability (van Steveninck 1965; Poovaiah and Leopold 1973; Hepler 2005) and the structural reinforcement and cross-linking of cellwall constituents (Demarty et al. 1984; Chan et al. 2017). The latter functions are associated with apoplastic Ca. This Ca pool constitutes by far the largest in a fruit (Demarty et al. 1984).
Communicated by L. Kalcsits. * Moritz Knoche [email protected]‑hannover.de 1
Institute of Horticultural Production Systems, Leibniz-University Hannover, Herrenhäuser Straße 2, 30419 Hannover, Germany
Because fruit firmness is an important quality attribute in many fruit crop species, pre- and postharvest applications of Ca are commonly made to improve these properties, including in apple (Conway et al. 2002; Schlegel and Schönherr 2002), tomato (Garcia et al. 1995; Islam et al. 2016) and sweet cherry (Winkler and Knoche 2019). In sweet cherry, Ca is reported to positively affect fruitquality attributes such as firmness and cracking susceptibility [for review see Wi
Data Loading...
