INTERMITTENT WARMING HEAT SHOCK ON 'PISANA' APRICOTS DURING POSTHARVEST: SENSORIAL QUALITY AND PROTEOMIC APPROACH

Apricots are stone fruits with a rather short shelf-life. To extend their post¬harvest life, the fruits are commonly maintained at low temperature. Nevertheless, chilling injury symptoms like flesh woolliness and browning are developed. To improve their postharvest life, the effect of intermittent warming heat shock (IWHS) (39ºC for 7 hours after 12 days of cold storage) was studied in ‘Pisana’ apricots. Ripe fruits were submitted to intermittent warming, after sensorial-technical parameters, and chilling injury susceptibility was evaluated. The protein expression was also evaluated at harvest and after 15 and 30 days of cold storage. Deep Purple stained 2-DE gels; an average of 700 spots were generated for each evaluation. Some candidates were selected for further characterization due to their differential accumulation. Extractable juice content reached up to 50% in all evaluations. Firmness decreased in all treatments during the 30-day cold storage period. Flesh browning and woolliness was observed at ripening at 20ºC after 30 days of postharvest. The heat shock intermittent warming did not affect the appearance, taste and aroma (flavour) of apricots, at least after 15 days of postharvest. In the near future, we would be able to establish correlations between quality parameters, chilling injury incidence and the corresponding protein accumulation profile.