Search for Articles:
Title / Keyword
Author / Affiliation / Email
Journal
Article Type
 
 
Advanced Search
 
Section
Special Issue
Volume
Issue
Number
Page
 
5.4
4.5
Journals
Plants
Special Issues
Effects of Environmental Stress on Fruit Physiology, Growth and Quality
share announcement

Effects of Environmental Stress on Fruit Physiology, Growth and Quality

A special issue of Plants (ISSN 2223-7747). This special issue belongs to the section "Plant Response to Abiotic Stress and Climate Change".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (20 January 2024) | Viewed by 4749

Special Issue Editors

Dr. Eunice Areal Bacelar

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Centre for the Research and Technology of Agro-Environmental and Biological Sciences (CITAB), INOV4AGRO, University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, UTAD, Quinta de Prados, 5000-801 Vila Real, Portugal
Interests: ecophysiology of fruit crops; effects of environmental factors on fruit growth and quality; plant resistance to pathogenic fungi and protection by mycorrhization; water use efficiency and wastewater management
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Ana Paula Silva

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Centre for the Research and Technology of Agro-Environmental and Biological Sciences (CITAB), INOV4AGRO, University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro, UTAD, Quinta de Prados, 5000-801 Vila Real, Portugal
Interests: ecophysiology of fruit crops; effects of environmental factors and on fruit growth and quality; orchard management systems

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Environmental factors such as light, temperature, water, humidity, and nutrition influence plant physiology and are considered very important in determining growth and quality of fruits. Fruit crops are currently facing a combination of new challenges such as rising ozone levels, deviations in temperature trends, shifts in rainfall patterns, droughts, floods, and other natural disasters due to global climate change. However, it is very difficult to predict and generalize the risks of climate change scenarios in seasonal patterns of growth, development, yield, and quality of fruit species since the responses of plants are often highly complex and involve changes at multiple levels. The understanding of the effects of environmental stresses on fruit crops is vital to help scientists and farmers to mitigate their effects on yield, growth, and quality of fruits.

This Special Issue will accept papers from a broad scope of interdisciplinary research on impacts of environmental stress on fruit physiology, growth, and quality ranging from basic molecular biology to breeding. Ecological and meteorological studies in this area fall within the scope. Original research papers, methods, reviews, and perspectives are also welcome.

Particularly welcome are research papers on the following topics:

  • Fruit crop resistance to environmental change;
  • Strategies to increase water-use efficiency in fruit crops;
  • Survival ability of traditional Mediterranean fruit and nut crops;
  • Interactions between fruit and its microflora in relation to postharvest diseases, fruit quality, and safety;
  • Applications of postharvest ultraviolet radiation in fruits;
  • Heavy metals in orchard soils and fruits and their health risks;
  • Use of reclaimed wastewater on fruit quality and safety.

Dr. Eunice Areal Bacelar
Dr. Ana Paula Silva
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Plants is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • environmental stress factors
  • affecting
  • fruits
  • quality on growth and quality of fruits

Published Papers (3 papers)

Download All Papers
Order results
Result details
Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

13 pages, 3178 KiB  
Article
Unraveling the Mechanism of Cork Spot-like Physiological Disorders in ‘Kurenainoyume’ Apples Based on Occurrence Location
by Eichi Imura, Mitsuho Nakagomi, Taishi Hayashida, Tomomichi Fujita, Saki Sato and Kazuhiro Matsumoto
Plants 2024, 13(3), 381; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants13030381 - 27 Jan 2024
Viewed by 1124
Abstract
Cork spot-like physiological disorder (CSPD) is a newly identified issue in ‘Kurenainoyume’ apples, yet its mechanism remains unclear. To investigate CSPD, we conducted morphological observations on ‘Kurenainoyume’ apples with and without pre-harvest fruit-bagging treatment using light-impermeable paper bags. Non-bagged fruit developed CSPD in [...] Read more.
Cork spot-like physiological disorder (CSPD) is a newly identified issue in ‘Kurenainoyume’ apples, yet its mechanism remains unclear. To investigate CSPD, we conducted morphological observations on ‘Kurenainoyume’ apples with and without pre-harvest fruit-bagging treatment using light-impermeable paper bags. Non-bagged fruit developed CSPD in mid-August, while no CSPD symptoms were observed in bagged fruit. The bagging treatment significantly reduced the proportion of opened lenticels, with only 17.9% in bagged fruit compared to 52.0% in non-bagged fruits. In non-bagged fruit, CSPD spots tended to increase from the lenticels, growing in size during fruit development. The cuticular thickness and cross-sectional area of fresh cells in CSPD spots were approximately 16 µm and 1600 µm², respectively. Healthy non-bagged fruit reached these values around 100 to 115 days after full bloom from mid- to late August. Microscopic and computerized tomography scanning observations revealed that many CSPD spots developed at the tips of vascular bundles. Therefore, CSPD initiation between opened lenticels and vascular bundle tips may be influenced by water stress, which is potentially caused by water loss, leading to cell death and the formation of CSPD spots. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Effects of Environmental Stress on Fruit Physiology, Growth and Quality)
►▼ Show Figures

Graphical abstract

16 pages, 6146 KiB  
Article
Shading Net and Partial Covering Plastic Film Do Not Affect Phenology, Photosynthetic Activity or Fruit Quality Traits of Kensington Pride Mango
by Dario Scuderi, Giovanni Gugliuzza, Giuseppe Di Salvo, Federico Priola, Roberta Passafiume and Vittorio Farina
Plants 2022, 11(24), 3510; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants11243510 - 14 Dec 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1664
Abstract
Mango cultivation in a protected environment is becoming widespread in the Mediterranean basin where the species has to face unfavorable weather conditions which do not occur in its native cultivation areas. Besides open-air cultivation, greenhouses—and other protection systems such as shading nets and [...] Read more.
Mango cultivation in a protected environment is becoming widespread in the Mediterranean basin where the species has to face unfavorable weather conditions which do not occur in its native cultivation areas. Besides open-air cultivation, greenhouses—and other protection systems such as shading nets and partial covering of plastic films—have been tested recently. In this study, we focused on assessing the effect of a shading net, and a partially covering plastic film, on the development of “Kensington Pride” mango fruit skin-color, its final quality, and the plants’ photosynthetic activity. A new method of measuring mango skin-color on different sides of the fruit is proposed. No difference was observed with regard to the observed parameters between the plants cultivated under the two different protection systems and those growing in the open air. It can, therefore, be stated that such cultivation techniques do not alter the development of the mango fruit and its appearance, nor the plant’s photosynthetic activity. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Effects of Environmental Stress on Fruit Physiology, Growth and Quality)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

16 pages, 11668 KiB  
Article
Irrigation and Crop Load Management Lessen Rain-Induced Cherry Cracking
by Victor Blanco, Pedro J. Blaya-Ros, Roque Torres-Sánchez and Rafael Domingo
Plants 2022, 11(23), 3249; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants11233249 - 26 Nov 2022
Cited by 4 | Viewed by 1292
Abstract
The combined effects of deficit irrigation and crop load level on sweet cherry (Prunus avium L.) physiological and agronomic response were evaluated during the 2019 season in a commercial orchard located in southeastern Spain. Two irrigation treatments were imposed: (i) control treatment [...] Read more.
The combined effects of deficit irrigation and crop load level on sweet cherry (Prunus avium L.) physiological and agronomic response were evaluated during the 2019 season in a commercial orchard located in southeastern Spain. Two irrigation treatments were imposed: (i) control treatment (CTL) irrigated above crop water requirements at 110% of crop evapotranspiration (ETC) and (ii) a deficit irrigation treatment (DI) irrigated at 70% ETC. Within each irrigation treatment, crop load was adjusted to three levels: 100% (natural crop load—high), 66% (medium crop load), and 33% (low crop load). The water relations results were more affected by the irrigation strategies applied than by the crop load management. The deficit irrigation strategy applied reduced soil water availability for DI trees, which led to a continuous decrease in their gas exchange and stem water potential. At harvest, the fruit water potential and osmotic potential of cherries from the DI treatment resulted in significantly lower values than those measured in cherries from CTL trees. On the other hand, both the irrigation strategies imposed and the crop load management used impacted fruit quality. Trees with the lowest level of crop load had fruits of greater size, regardless of the irrigation treatment assayed, and in the DI treatment, cherries from the trees with the lowest crop load were darker and more acidic than those from the trees with the highest crop load. Our results emphasize the different effects that rainfall before harvest has on mature cherries. Thus, cracked cherries at harvest represented 27.1% of the total yield of CTL trees while they were 8.3% of the total yield in DI trees. Cherries from CTL trees also showed a greater cracking index than those from DI trees. Moreover, a linear relationship between crop load and fruit cracked at harvest was observed, particularly for the CTL treatment; thus, the lower the crop load, the greater the proportion of cracked cherries. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Effects of Environmental Stress on Fruit Physiology, Growth and Quality)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:
 
Displaying articles 1-3
Back to TopTop