Location: Physiology and Pathology of Tree Fruits Research
Project Number: 2094-43000-007-015-T
Project Type: Trust Fund Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: Apr 1, 2016
End Date: Dec 31, 2019
Objective:
Find changes in peel chemistry specifically associated with delayed response to light-related injury prior to and during symptom development. Develop a system to check the capacity of tissue to make energy required for the peel to remain viable cold storage. Determine if changes in peel chemistry are indicative of soft scald risk prior to symptom development.
Approach:
Apples will be marked according to orientation with respect to the sun exposure and harvested from a commercial orchard. Harvested apples will be ranked according to pre-harvest light exposure then stored and peel sampled periodically during cold storage. Changes in primary and secondary metabolite levels will be evaluated using our metabolic profiling protocol for GC and LC-MS. The degree of light exposure will be correlated with eventual injury and changes in metabolite levels to link areas of metabolism with risk for injury development.
