Postharvest Heat Treatment for Mitigation of Chilling Injury in Fruits and Vegetables

Low-temperature storage is widely used as a postharvest treatment applied for delaying senescence in vegetables and ornamentals and ripening in fruits, upholding their postharvest quality. But the refrigerated storage of tropical and subtropical crop plant species provokes a set of physiological alterations known as chilling injury (CI) that negatively affect their quality and frequently renders the product not saleable. The increasing demand for consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables, along with restriction on the use of synthetic chemicals to reduce CI, has encouraged scientific research on the use of heat treatments as an environment-friendly technology for CI mitigation. Membrane damage and reactive oxygen species production are multifarious adverse effects of chilling as oxidative stress in sensitive fruits and vegetables. Chilling mitigation in heat-treated fruits and vegetables could be attributed to (1) enhancement of membrane integrity by the increase of unsaturated fatty acids/saturated fatty acids (unSFA/SFA) ratio; (2) enhancement of heat shock protein gene expression and accumulation; (3) enhancement of the antioxidant system activity; (4) enhancement of the arginine pathways which lead to the accumulation of signaling molecules with pivotal roles in improving chilling tolerance such as polyamines, nitric oxide, and proline; (5) alteration in phenylalanine ammonia-lyase and polyphenol oxidase enzyme activities; and (6) enhancement of sugar metabolism. In the present review, we have focused on the impacts of heat treatments on postharvest chilling tolerance and the mechanisms activated by this environment-friendly technology in fruits and vegetables.