Insight into the Role of Melatonin in Mitigating Chilling Injury and Maintaining the Quality of Cold-Stored Fruits and Vegetables

ABSTRACT

Chilling injury (CI) causes significant losses in fruits and vegetables during cold storage. CI symptoms exhibited as browning, off-flavour and sunken spots, reduced juice content, uneven ripening and softening in fresh horticultural produce. Application of melatonin (MT) effectively mitigates CI in cold-stored fruits and vegetables. This comprehensive review focuses at discussing symptoms, the mechanism of CI, regulation of melatonin-mediated chilling tolerance, and meta-analysis of CI reduction in horticultural produce. Melatonin mitigates CI, maintains quality of cold-stored horticultural produce by upregulating early hydrogen peroxide signalling, activities of antioxidant enzymes after inhibition of reactive oxygen species (ROS) accumulation, mitochondrial dysfunction, and membrane leakage.

KEYWORDS:

• Chilling injury
• melatonin
• meta-analysis
• ROS scavenging
• polyamines

Acknowledgments

The first author is very thankful to Edith Cowan University (ECU), Joondalup Western Australia, Australia, to grant the Higher Degree by Research Scholarship during the Ph. D degree in Horticulture at the School of Science, ECU. We are also thankful to Michael Stein, HDR Communication Adviser, Edith Cowan University, Joondalup, Western Australia, Australia for editing this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

All the authors have reviewed the paper and agreed to publish it without any financial or personal interest in the work.

Author contributions

H. M. S. Shah; conceptualization, data acquisition, writing original draft, visualization, Z. Singh: conceptualization, review and editing, project administration, supervision, E. Afrifa-Yamoah; Statistical analysis, review and editing, visualization, supervision; M. U. Hasan; review and editing, J. Kaur; review and editing; A. Woodward; review and editing, supervision

Additional information

Funding

The authors reported there is no funding associated with the work featured in this article.