Efficiency of Salicylic Acid Application on Postharvest Perishable Crops - Salicylic Acid: Plant Growth and Development - page 333

quality maintenance of horticultural and ornamental produces. In recent years,
many postharvest technologies for perishable produces including fruit, vegetables
and ornamentals have been adopted where SA is in use. SA, a simple plant phe-
nolic compound, is known as an endogenous signal molecule regulating plant
developmental processes and modulating both biotic and abiotic stresses (Ding and
Wang 2003 ; Horváth et al. 2007 ; Asghari and Aghdam 2010 ). It is widely rec-
ognized that SA reduces respiratory rate (Raskin et al. 1989 ; Asghari and Aghdam
2010 ) inhibits ethylene biosynthesis (Leslie and Romani 1988 ), induces the
expression of defense genes (Meena et al. 2001 ; Wen et al. 2005 ) and decreases
lipid oxidation and membrane senescence (Kazemi et al. 2011a , b ) in plants.
In recent years, SA has been applied for postharvest purposes for delaying the
processes related with ripening and senescence processes (Srivastava and Dwivedi
2000 ; Zhang et al. 2003a , b ; Imran et al. 2007 ; Gerailoo and Ghasemnezhad,
2011 ), alleviating chilling injury (Sayyari et al. 2009 ; Luo et al. 2011 ; Yang et al.
2012 ; Luo et al. 2012 ), retarding browning reaction (Peng and Jiang 2006 ; Lu et al.
2011 ), enhancing bioactive compounds and antioxidant capacity (Elwan and El-
Hamahmy 2009 ; Valero et al. 2011 ; Wei et al. 2011 ), maintaining firmness
(Gholami et al. 2010 ; Tareen et al. 2012 ) and controlling postharvest decay
(Babalar et al. 2007 ; Asghari and Aghdam 2010 ). Thus, the effects of SA appli-
cation on postharvest physiology and quality of horticultural and ornamental crops
are reviewed in this chapter.
2 The Application of Salicylic Acid
In the past, the purpose of application of exogenous SA and its derivatives, such as
acetyl salicylate and methyl salicylate, was to control postharvest disease of fruits
and vegetables by increasing the systemic acquired resistance and to increase
stress resistance (Qin et al. 2003 ; Park et al. 2007 ; Babalar et al. 2007 ; Wang et al.
2011 ). Recently, many studies have reported that SA could be used as a com-
mercial application for maintaining postharvest quality to prolong shelf-life of
fruits, vegetables and ornamental produces. Both pre- and post-harvest SA
applications in extending shelf-life and maintaining quality of postharvest pro-
duces have been investigated and developed for commercial use. Spraying and
adding into growth medium are the approaches used for pre-harvest treatment. The
foliar spray of SA (10 -6 and 10 -4 M) could improve the postharvest quality of
pepper fruit by increasing fruit weight, the level of biologically active compounds
and regulating sugar content (Elwan and El-Hamahmy 2009 ). Gholami et al.
( 2010 ) reported that SA pre-harvest treatment at three weeks before harvest
improved the quality and reduced fungal infection of 'Mashhad' sweet cherry fruit.
The common dipping technique is used to treat post-harvest fruits and vegetables,
such as that of asparagus (Wei et al. 2011 ), banana fruit (Srivastava and Dwivedi
2000 ), kiwifruit (Zhang et al. 2003a , b ), mandarin orange fruit (Zheng and
Zhang 2004 ), peach fruit (Han et al. 2003 ; Tareen et al. 2012 ), pear fruit (Imran