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AMELIORATION OF CHILLING INJURY IN CHILLING SENSITIVE VEGETABLES BY MEFLUIDIDE AND GLK-8903
Chilling can injure (even kill crops depending on chilling intensity) through physiological dysfunctions, leading to slow growth and development, resulting in low yield, delayed maturity and harvest with poor quality produce.
Wierenga and Hagon (1966) reported, for example, that bean production was reduced as much as 34% by cold irrigation water in California.
A 5–6 day chilling stress (3°/4°C) at the anthesis stage of the tomato resulted in poor quality of the fruits (Li, 1991) which reduce the marketability.
Occurrence of chilling stress is very common during the crop life-cycle in many of the agricultural production areas worldwide.
Research for improving plant chilling tolerance for better crop performance is a continuing challenge for agronomists, horticulturalists and biological scientists.
Low temperature sensitivity of plants varies from species to species.
There are two groups of plants in terms of low temperature sensitivity.
One group is chilling sensitive and the other is chilling insensitive.
Some major vegetables such as tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum), bean (Phaselous vulgaris), cucumber (Cucmis sativus) and bell pepper (Capsicum frutescans) are a few examples of chilling sensitive crops species.
Chilling sensitive plants can not tolerate freezing of tissue water and are killed by a -1° to -3°C frost.
Their cold hardiness remains unchanged during seasonal growth.
Searches for economically feasible strategies for plant cold protection require investigations of short-term solutions until genetically improved long-term solutions