The Effects of Preharvest Calcium and Gibberellin Treatments on Sweet Pepper Chilling Injury During Storage

Sweet pepper is chilling sensitive and symptoms such as color changes, softening, quality loss and fungal infections are chilling injury symptoms. In the present study, the effects of preharvest 0.5 % CaCl2 and 50 mgl-1 gibberelic acid treatments, at two and three spraying times were investigated on some qualitative characteristics and control of chilling injury in cv. California Wonder during cold storage. Results showed that calcium and gibberellin treatments, as comparison to the control treatment had lower levels of chilling injury and the lowest chilling injury was observed in CaCl2 treatment at three sparying times. Calcium treatment had lower level of MDA than gibberellin treatment and gibberellin treatment had lower level of MDA than the control treatment. In all treatments, firmness and titratable acidity were more and TSS was less than those of control. Ascorbic acid content and antioxidant capacity of calcium and gibberellin treatments were more than those of control. The highest amount of calcium was observed in CaCl2 treatments. The gibberellin treatments had also more calcium than control. No significant differences were observed between two and three times sparying in most of qualitative characteristics. Therefore application of, both CaCl2 and gibberellin treatments resulted in maintetance of quality and reduction of chilling injury in sweet pepper during cold storage and could be used for improvement postharvest life of this fruit.