262 P. BISWAS ET AL.
in susceptibility to decay is a complex mechanism because of multi-
faceted host-pathogen interactions (Barkai-Golan 2001), pitting is usu-
ally followed by decay incidence. Overall, results suggest that pitting
and decay may require slightly longer time to express than altered color
development.
Complete failure to ripen occurs at 3◦C after 9 d and after 28 d at 5◦C.
Susceptibility to decay appears to be more sensitive to chilling temper-
ature than complete inhibition of red coloration/failure to ripen (Cheng
and Shewfelt 1988; Artes and Escriche 1994). An increased rate of ion ́
leakage has not been reported at temperatures> 4 ◦C and thus requires
fairly extreme chilling temperatures to develop. It is of course possible
that researchers have not looked for increased ion leakage at relatively
warmer temperature. However, tomatoes stored at 6◦C for 7 d did not
show an increase in ion leakage (Biswas et al. 2012b). Even at 2.5◦C,
significant increase in leakage was not noticed until after around 14 d
suggesting the slow development of this symptom.
Overall, there is a “threshold temperature” for storing mature-green
tomatoes below which the fruit start to show a series of chilling-induced
symptoms. Below this threshold temperature, time and temperature
together set the thresholds for onset of damage and different symptoms
have a different time and temperature threshold. There is a temperature
sequence where some symptoms (flavor loss, blotchy red coloration) are
triggered at higher temperature than others (complete inhibition of red
coloration, pitting, or decay). Thus if maintained below 13◦C, which is
the recommended storage temperature, mature-green fruit will first lose
their flavor, then show blotchy red coloration and altered texture, fol-
lowed by pitting/sunken patches accompanied with increased suscep-
tibility to decay (mainlyAlternaria); after longer time at that chilling
temperature, fruit will fail to ripen completely.
While each symptom may have a time–temperature threshold, prior
growing condition, cultivar, stage of development or storage environ-
ment (e.g., RH, gas composition in store-room atmosphere) may shift
this time–temperature threshold. For example, Biswas et al. (2012a)
reported that storage at 6◦C for 27 d did not induce decay for New
Zealand-grown “Cedrico” tomatoes, whereas decay was consistently
found in Florida-grown “Soraya” tomatoes after storage at both 2.5◦C
and 6◦C for 13 or 27 d. This suggests that chilling sensitivity was
enhanced for “Soraya” tomatoes and for them, a chilling symptom
(e.g., decay) started to develop at a relatively higher temperature and
a shorter time than was found in “Cedrico” tomatoes. Patterson and
Reid (1990) indicated that threshold temperature is often typical for the