ARS | Publication request: A COMPARISON OF ANATOMICAL CHANGES BETWEEN NORMAL AND CHILLING INJURY LONGAN FRUIT PERICARP

Submitted to: Acta Horticulturae
Publication Type: Peer Reviewed Journal
Publication Acceptance Date: July 1, 2005
Publication Date: August 1, 2005
Repository URL: http://www.ars.usda.gov/sp2UserFiles/Place/66210000/Reprint947.pdf
Citation: Jaitrong, S., Rattanapanone, N., Boonyakiat, D., Baldwin, E.A. 2005. A comparison of anatomical changes between normal and chilling injury longan fruit pericarp. Acta Horticulturae. 682:1565-1570.

Interpretive Summary: Longan is a grape-sized tropical fruit that is popular in Asia, the Caribbean and Latin America. Being tropical in origin, the fruit suffer easily from cold temperatures used in transport. This study investigated the reason why these fruit incur chilling injury by looking at their surface and sub-surface structure. All fruits and vegetable have a waxy layer that was found to be damaged in chilling-injured longan fruit. Subsurface cells also were found to be leaking the cell contents indicating that the cell membranes were also impaired.

Technical Abstract: The anatomy of pericarp from longan fruit (Dimocarpus longan Lour.) cv. Daw was compared for normal and chilling injury fruits. The normal pericarp thickness was 630-700 nm and consisted of three layers. The exocarp had discontinuous cuticle with many natural openings and some epidermal hairs. The subepidermal sclerenchyma layer was thick. The mesocarp had some parenchyma cells with large intercellular spaces in the main body of the pericarp. The endocarp was made up of a single thin layer of epidermal cells. Pericarp from chilling injury fruit showed flakes from the cuticle, damaged epidermal hairs, fibrous tissue on the exocarp, and damaged parenchyma cell walls in the mesocarp.