The effect of postharvest phenylalanine treatment on physicochemical attributes of ‎cornelian cherry fruits during cold storage

Cornelian cherry fruit is an important source of vitamins and antioxidant compounds, and the prevention of the reduction of fruit nutritional value, appearance quality and firmness during the post-harvest period is one of the important issue in this fruit. The effect of phenylalanine postharvest treatment (0, 2, 4, 6 mmol), and different storage times (7, 14 and 21 days) on maintaining the physicochemical properties of cornelian cherry fruit during storage as a factorial experiment based on completely randomized design with three replications was investigated in current research. Immediately after treatment, the fruits were placed in a cold storage at 2±1 °C and relative humidity of 85±5%. Based on the results, the maximum content of anthocyanin (2.6 mg CYN-3-GLU/100g FW), flavonoids (13.16 mg QE/100g FW), total phenol (371.8 mg GAE/100g FW), soluble solids (17.66 %) in the third week and maximum content of ascorbic acid (26.89 mg/100g FW) were accompanied by 2 mmol phenylalanine. The lowest amount of H2O2 (0.36 µmol/100g FW) and the percentage of frostbite, and also the highest amount of proline (0.36 mg/g FW) were observed with 6 mmol phenylalanine treatment in the third week. The results showed in order to achieve the important goal of storage cornelian cherry in the cold storage, which maintains the desired physical and chemical characteristics of this fruit and has a longer shelf than storage at normal temperature, 2 mmol phenylalanine can be the most appropriate treatment.