Picking wound curing to reduce botrytis storage rot of kiwifruit

Abstract

Incidence of stem-end rot in kiwifruit (Actinidia deliciosa) inoculated with Botrytis conidia just before entering coolstorage was reduced progressively with increasing duration of a holding period at ambient temperature between harvesting and grading/packing, from 49% with a nil holding period to 6% with 7 days at ambient. A holding period at 0°C before grading/packing was also effective, but over a longer time scale; rot incidence was not reduced with 4 days, but was reduced to 20% with 7 days at 0°C. A similar pattern of reductions in botrytis rot incidence occurred in uninoculated kiwifruit subjected to the same treatments. The high incidence of rots, relative to other treatments, in fruit packed and coolstored immediately after harvest appeared to be caused by an interaction between the effects of early coolstorage and the effects of the polyethylene-lined tray, because reductions in rot incidence did occur in treatments where only one or the other of these factors was present. © 1992 The Royal Society of New Zealand.