TY - JOUR

T1 - Pathways of postharvest water loss from banana fruit

AU - Khanal, Bishnu P.

AU - Sangroula, Bimbisar

AU - Bhattarai, Anil

AU - Almeida, Gustavo Klamer

AU - Knoche, Moritz

N1 - Funding Information: Many thanks first of all to Mr. Peter Grimm-Wetzel. He managed all the fruit, in perfect quality, used in the experiments. We also thank Mr. Simon Sitzenstock for his technical support during experimentation and Dr. Sandy Lang for his thoughtful comments on this manuscript.

PY - 2022/9

Y1 - 2022/9

N2 - Transpiration affects the water balance of the skin of a banana. The objective was to monitor the skin permeance in ripening bananas and to identify the mechanism(s) and pathway(s) of water vapor movement from skin to atmosphere. Transpiration was quantified gravimetrically. Cumulative transpiration increased linearly with time. Inducing ripening using ethylene increased autocatalytic ethylene production, induced a change in skin color from green to yellow, but had no effect on the skin water vapor permeance. The permeance was highest at the calyx end of the fruit but there was no significant gradient of permeance along the remaining axis or among the three faces of the fruit. A banana fruit surface is stomatous. About 11% of the stomata were infiltrated by aqueous acridine orange; about 63% of stomata were infiltrated if a silicone surfactant was added. The skin permeance was closely related to the density of the stomata that were infiltrated with acridine orange without the surfactant. We calculate about 44% of total transpiration was stomatal, the remaining 56% was cuticular. The permeance of a hypothetical astomatous cuticle was estimated to be about 0.66 ( ± 0.06) × 10−4 m s−1. Along the cuticular pathway, the wax offered the largest resistance to transpiration, followed by the cutin matrix and, last, the cell wall. Transpiration rate was positively related to temperature, but negatively related to relative humidity. The results indicate transpiration is a physical process that occurs in ripening banana to about nearly equal extents via the stomata and via the cuticle.

AB - Transpiration affects the water balance of the skin of a banana. The objective was to monitor the skin permeance in ripening bananas and to identify the mechanism(s) and pathway(s) of water vapor movement from skin to atmosphere. Transpiration was quantified gravimetrically. Cumulative transpiration increased linearly with time. Inducing ripening using ethylene increased autocatalytic ethylene production, induced a change in skin color from green to yellow, but had no effect on the skin water vapor permeance. The permeance was highest at the calyx end of the fruit but there was no significant gradient of permeance along the remaining axis or among the three faces of the fruit. A banana fruit surface is stomatous. About 11% of the stomata were infiltrated by aqueous acridine orange; about 63% of stomata were infiltrated if a silicone surfactant was added. The skin permeance was closely related to the density of the stomata that were infiltrated with acridine orange without the surfactant. We calculate about 44% of total transpiration was stomatal, the remaining 56% was cuticular. The permeance of a hypothetical astomatous cuticle was estimated to be about 0.66 ( ± 0.06) × 10−4 m s−1. Along the cuticular pathway, the wax offered the largest resistance to transpiration, followed by the cutin matrix and, last, the cell wall. Transpiration rate was positively related to temperature, but negatively related to relative humidity. The results indicate transpiration is a physical process that occurs in ripening banana to about nearly equal extents via the stomata and via the cuticle.

KW - Brown spots

KW - Cuticle

KW - Fruit skin

KW - Musa

KW - Stomata

KW - Transpiration

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85134573922&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1016/j.postharvbio.2022.111979

DO - 10.1016/j.postharvbio.2022.111979

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85134573922

VL - 191

JO - Postharvest biology and technology

JF - Postharvest biology and technology

SN - 0925-5214

M1 - 111979

ER -