Proceedings of The World Avocado Congress III, 1995 pp. 335 - 339

 

SENSITIVITY OF AVOCADO FRUIT TO ETHYLENE

P.J. Hofman, R.L. McLauchlan and L.G. Smith

Horticulture Postharvest Group

Department of Primary Industries Queensland

19 Hercules Street, Hamilton, 4007

Australia

Abstract

 

The respiration of individual 'Hass' and 'Fuerte' fruit was monitored during storage at 8ºC and 10ºC respectively for 14 days, under a continuous flow of humidified air containing ethylene (C2H4) at 0, 0.01, 0.05, 0.25, 1.0 and 5.0 μL.L-1. Respiration rates of 'Fuerte' fruit under 0.01 μL.L-1 C2H4 were significantly higher than the controls after 3.3 days of storage, but for 'Hass' fruit respiration rates did not become significantly higher until under 1.0 μL.L-1 for 5.7 days.

In another experiment, 'Hass' fruit were held in the presence of 0, 35, 70, 140, 280 or 1000 g of Purafil® (C2H4 absorbent) at 20ºC. Increasing amounts of Purafil® consistently reduced the maximum concentration of C2H4 detected in the storage containers. Days from harvest to maximum detected C2H4 production rate (MDEPR) in bulk samples was increased from 8.1 to an average of 11.1 days by the presence of Purafil®, but increasing amounts of Purafil® had no further effect. Fruit stored individually in ventilated containers in the absence of Purafil® reached MDEPR on average at 13.8 days.

These results indicate that stimulation of ripening by C2H4 evolution from earlier- ripening fruit may be important in hastening ripening of fruit stored in bulk. Ethylene removal in storage may offer some advantage, but concentrations may need to be reduced to 0.05 μL.L-1 or lower to obtain significant benefit, especially for 'Fuerte'. However, storage of only those fruit with similar storage capacity is likely to be of greater benefit. A knowledge of production factors contributing to poor storage life is required.

1. Introduction

Avocado marketing within Australia generally requires transport by road under cold storage temperatures (ideally 7-10ºC) for 3-7 days, and sea freight to export markets will require 3-5 weeks storage life. Control of ripening is essential to successful marketing under these conditions.

Ethylene plays an important role in fruit ripening. Fruit sensitivity to C2H4 and the presence of C2H4 during storage is generally undesirable, and reduction of C2H4 in commercial storage of several fruits is practiced. Since avocado fruit are sensitive to C2H4 (Zauberman and Fuchs, 1973; Adato and Gazit, 1974), their storage should benefit by control of C2H4 concentrations. This paper describes some of the responses of avocado fruit to storage under various conditions in relation to C2H4.

 

2. Materials and Methods

 

2.1 Experiment I

'Hass' avocado fruit were obtained by road freight from south east Queensland, and in another experiment 'Fuerte' fruit from north Queensland by airfreight. Fruit were placed in individual, sealed containers and ventilated with air (93-95% RH) containing 0, 0.01, 0.05, 0.25, 1.0 and 5.0 μL.L-1 C2H4, at a flow rate of 25-40 mL.min-1. Effluent gas streams from each container were connected via a rotary gas sampling unit to an infra-red gas analyser (Horiba PIR-2000) for carbon dioxide (CO2) analysis. Seven fruit were used for each C2H4 concentration. 'Hass' fruit were stored at 8ºC and 'Fuerte' fruit at 10ºC, to represent typical temperatures observed during commercial refrigerated road transport. Fruit were removed at 14 days, and held for a further 6 days at 20ºC to ripen.

Skin colour was measured using a Hunter Labscan 6000 0/45º spectrocolorimeter fitted with a 25 mm orifice, D65 illuminant, and 10º observer. Fruit firmness was quantified using an Instron Universal Testing Machine model 1122, fitted with a 12 mm hemispherical probe (probe penetration 2 mm at 20 mm.min-1).

 2.2 Experiment 2

'Hass' avocado fruit were harvested from south east Queensland and dipped in 0.55 mL.L-1 prochloraz for 30 sec. The following day, 42 fruit were individually weighed and sealed in separate 1.4 L respiration chambers at 20ºC, each ventilated with 90-160 mL.min-1 C2H4-free, humidified (93% RH) air. In addition, samples of 20 fruit were sealed in each of 6 ventilated 30 L plastic containers, each receiving about 300 mL.min-1 C2H4-free, humidified air. Purafil® (0, 35, 70, 140, 280 and 1 000 g) was placed in each of the containers to absorb fruit-produced C2H4. The effluent gas from each container was connected via the 50 channel rotary gas sampling unit to a Shimadzu gas chromatograph for C2H4 analysis. The days to C2H4 peak, the maximum detected concentration in each container, and the % dry matter (DM) of fruit at eating soft were determined.

3. Results

3.1 Experiment I

'Fuerte' fruit showed enhanced ripening at 10ºC (significantly higher respiration rate, and softer fruit) under all C2H4 treatments compared to the control (figure 1; tables 1 and 2), while 'Hass' fruit showed similar responses only under 1 and 5 μL.L-1 C2H4 at 8ºC. Ripening was enhanced with higher C2H4 concentrations, and a similar pattern was also evident after a further 6 days at 22ºC (data not presented).

3.2 Experiment 2

The presence of Purafil® in the storage container increased the time to first detected C2H4 (> 0.1 μL.kg-1.hr-1 ) and the time to maximum detectable C2H4 production rate (MDEPR), and decreased the MDEPR compared to the control (table 3). Increasing amounts of Purafil® logarithmically reduced the MDEPR but had no further effect on the time to first detectable C2H4, nor on the time to MDEPR.

Fruit from the same harvest, when stored individually, on average reached MDEPR after 13.8 days (table 4), compared to 8.1 days for the 20 fruit stored together in the 30 L container (table 3, 0 Purafil®). There was also considerable variation in MDEPR, days to MDEPR, and % DM between individual fruit (table 4). No significant correlation was observed between days to MDEPR and % DM. Similar results, indicating more rapid ripening of fruit stored together compared to fruit stored in isolation, were obtained with later harvests (data not presented).

4. Discussion

 

These results confirm avocado sensitivity to C2H4, even at relatively low storage temperatures.    The significance of these results depends on storage time, but the enhancement of ripening noted under exposure to 1.0 and 0.01 μL.L-1 C2H4 for 'Hass' and 'Fuerte" respectively is likely to be significant in long-term commercial storage. The apparently greater sensitivity of 'Fuerte' in this experiment would have been slightly influenced by the higher storage temperature used for 'Fuerte'. Possible differences in maturity between the two cultivars may also have had an effect. However the magnitude of the difference suggests a cultivar difference in sensitivity. The thicker skin of 'Hass' may contribute to a reduced sensitivity to C2H4, mediated through increased diffusive resistance to C2H4 (Banks et al., 1993).

The variation in % DM and days to MDEPR in avocado fruit harvested on the same day and from the same trees has also been noted by Smith et al. (1992), and in % DM and days to eating soft in mango by Hofman et al. (1995). This has significant commercial implications, and an attempt to reduce this variation to give uniform ripening is one of the main reasons for the development of C2H4 ripening procedures for avocado in Australia (Ledger and Barker, 1994). The present results also indicate that this variability can reduce shelf life (and potentially storage life) of bulk-stored fruit, presumably because C2H4 produced by early-ripening fruit triggers the ripening of adjacent fruit. The ineffectiveness of increasing amounts of Purafil® to further increase shelf life indicates that, under the current experimental conditions, Purafil® has only limited capacity to remove C2H4 evolved by earlier ripening fruit, even at 1 kg Purafil® to 7 kg fruit. The results of experiment 1 indicate that C2H4 concentrations may need to be reduced below 1 μL.L-1   (and possibly below 0.05 μL.L-l  ) to have reliable benefit.

Therefore, a more effective means of increasing storage life than C2H4 removal may be to exclude from storage those fruit which will ripen prematurely. An understanding of factors causing variability in postharvest ripening behaviour is essential to this, and studies to identify these pre-harvest factors are part of an ongoing program in our laboratories.

Acknowledgments

 

This research was conducted under Project 9313 of the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, and project DAQ-I 17A of the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation. We thank Geraldine Meiburg and Leigh Barker for technical support.

 

References

 

Adato, I., and Gazit. S., 1974. Postharvest response of avocado fruits of different maturity to delayed ethylene treatments. Plant Physiol. 53:899-902.

Banks, N.H., Cleland, D.J., Yearsley, C.W., and Kingsley, A.M., 1993. Internal atmosphere composition - a key concept in responses of fruit and vegetables to modified atmospheres. Proc. Australasian Postharv. Conf. 1993: 137-143.

Hofman, P.J., Smith, L.G., Holmes, R., Campbell, T., and Meiburg, G., 1995. Mango fruit quality at harvest is affected by production conditions. Proc. Aust. Mango 2000 Production Workshop (In Press).

Ledger, S.N., and Barker, L.R., 1994. Ripeness indicators in Hass avocados. Internal Report, Horticulture Postharvest Group, DPI, Queensland.

Smith, L.G., Jordan, R.A., Hofman, P.J., Jobin-Decor, M., Zauberman, G., and Ledger, S.N., 1992. Long term storage of avocados. Proc. Aust. Avocado Growers' Fed. Conf. 'Management into the Future'.

Zauberman, G., and Fuchs Y., 1973. Ripening processes in avocado stored in ethylene atmosphere in cold storage. J. Amer. Soc. Hort. Sci. 98:477-480.