- CHILLING INJURY IN TOMATO FRUIT 239
reduced CI in some crops (Ben-Amor et al. 1999), or induced CI in
others (Lafuente et al. 2001). Avocados stored below 12◦Cwith
ethylene suffered severe tissue discoloration (Lee and Young 1984),
while blocking ethylene action by 1-methylcyclopropene (1-MCP) in
avocados stored at 5◦C caused a reduction in mesocarp discoloration
and decay development (Pesis et al. 2002). Nevertheless, ethylene was
not involved in external skin discoloration in cool-stored avocados
(Pesis et al. 2002). In “Shamouti” oranges, Porat et al. (1999) found that
ethylene enhanced CI symptoms as indicated by de-greening and decay
development, but inhibiting ethylene action by 1-MCP did not reverse
the ethylene response, instead it increased CI symptoms with accumu-
lation of volatile off-flavors. The effect of ethylene, though, could be
related to crop species (Concellon et al. 2005), since 1-MCP prevented ́
accumulation of volatile compounds and decreased CI symptoms in
“Tahiti” lime (Kluge et al. 2003). Exogenous ethylene application accel-
erated CI symptoms in climacteric plum while inhibition of ethylene
action by 1-MCP or nitric oxide reduced CI (Candan et al. 2008; Singh
et al. 2009). Equally, removal of ethylene from the atmosphere reduced
the incidence of core browning in apple, although the beneficial
effect was cultivar specific (DeEll et al. 2007). 1-MCP reduced CI in
climacteric fruits such as persimmons (Salvador et al. 2004) and in
non-climacteric fruits such as pineapples (Selvarajah et al. 2001). Fur-
thermore, inhibition of autocatalytic ethylene production by antisense
ACORNA led to reduced chilling-induced pitting and browning in the
rind of cantaloupe melon (Ben-Amor et al. 1999). Together, these results
indicate that chilling sensitivity of these fruit increases with exposure to
ethylene.
In some crops, however, ethylene has a positive effect in alleviating
CI. Treating green tomato fruit with 100μLL−^1 ethylene before stor-
age prevented CI and increased shelf life (Chomchalow et al. 2002),
while green tomatoes treated with 1-MCP showed an enhanced chilling-
induced decay susceptibility after cool storage (Jing and Zi-Sheng 2011;
Biswas et al. 2014b). Together these results confirm the beneficial role
of ethylene in reducing CI in tomato. Fresh-cut red ripe tomato slices
in packages with high ethylene concentrations stored at 5◦Chadlower
CI (indicated by water-soaked areas) than slices stored in packages with
low ethylene concentrations (Hong and Gross 2000), although ethylene
treatment of tomato slices had an undesirable effect of accelerated soft-
ening (Pangaribuan 2009). In contrast, Jeong et al. (2004) indicated that
inhibition of ethylene action by 1-MCP reduced water-soaking inci-
dence in tomato slices stored at 5◦C and they suggested that this was
an ethylene-mediated symptom of senescence and not a CI symptom as