PREDICTING BITTER PIT IN ‘GOLDEN SMOOTHEE’ APPLES

Bitter pit is the most important physiological disorder in apples.
Effective prediction methods would be a good instrument either for industry or growers.
Different methods were evaluated in 2008 and 2009 to predict the bitter pit at 40, 20 and 10 days before commercial harvest in ‘Golden Smoothee’ apples.
A 40-fruit sample of each date and from different orchards was vacuum infiltrated with MgCl₂, or immersed into ethephon solution, or left untreated.
Bitter pit-like symptoms were evaluated approximately every 7 days on individual fruit kept at room temperature.
An additional lot of each orchard was taken at harvest to establish the real bitter pit incidence after cold storage for 3 month.
To estimate the predictive accuracy of each method, the bitter pit-like symptoms at 40, 20 and 10 dbh were related to the real bitter pit at postharvest.
In both years, the 3 methods showed bitter pit-like symptoms approximately 7 days after the sampling showing high correlations with the real bitter pit incidence after 3 months of cold storage.

XXVIII International Horticultural Congress on Science and Horticulture for People (IHC2010): International Symposium on Postharvest Technology in the Global Market

E. Torres , S. Alegre

Malus × domestica, calcium disorders, Mg infiltration, ethephon dip

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2012.934.114