Effect of postharvest treatment on physiological disorders of new apple cultivars

Traditional cultivars are still in demand, but growers are weeding them out in favor of cultivars with a better taste, crunchier texture and/or higher sales prices. The success of new cultivars will depend on its distinctiveness, on the consistence over years of quality, and on the growing, packing and marketing resources needed for their commercialization. New cultivars can offer an enhanced quality often coupled with unique attributes, however, less is known about their storage features and the influence of the storage protocols. The storability of new introduced cultivars is limited by physiological disorders naturally occurring during storage which seem to cause the main postharvest fruit losses. The present work focused on new promising apple cultivars developed in different countries and grown in the Trentino Alto Adige region (northern Italy). The trials were conducted in 2019 and 2020, during which a complex of different physiological disorders was observed, among which, soft scald represented the most common. The soft scald incidence was studied under different cooling protocols. The fast cooling determined a higher soft scald incidence on the tested cultivars, with a mean disease incidence ranging between 23.8 and 32.1% after storage with a highest value on cultivar ‘PRE03’. The two-step cooling allowed to reduce the incidence during short-term storage by more than four times. 1-methylcyclopropene (1-MCP) application showed a limited effect on soft scald incidence.