Improving Postharvest Resistance in Fruits by External Application of trans-Resveratrol

As it is well-known, one of the main problems of modern agriculture is the postharvest fruit losses due to pathogen's attack and natural senescence during storage. Well established solutions to improve this situation, such as, for example, storage under controlled conditions and the use of synthetic pesticides, are not free of problems due to human health risks and environmental effects caused by chemical pesticides. A new strategy to solve these problems consists of developing methods to improve the natural plant resistance by using, upon their identification, the plant's own defense molecules, in other words, applying methods based on the plant's own natural processes of pest suppression to control spoilage. This requires the identification of components of the natural defense response in plants, which, in turn, demands highly sensitive, fast, and versatile analytical methods especially for trace, nonvolatile, compounds. In this work a laser-based technique has been applied for screening the postharvest elicitation of resveratrol by Botrytis cinerea in grapes. Besides antifungal character, resveratrol is known to present important antioxidant properties, which could also have positive effects on fruit conservation during storage. Consequently, several experiments were carried out in which exogenous application of resveratrol to several fruits maintained their postharvest quality. The quality of both resveratrol-treated and untreated fruits has been studied by the assessment of the biochemical composition and sensory analysis. Indeed, the present work demonstrates that the external application of resveratrol does not alter the sensorial and biochemical properties of the fruit. Keywords: Botrytis cinerea; fruit quality; laser spectrometry; plant natural pesticides; resveratrol