Postharvest Softening, Flavor and Quality of Fruits: Molecular Mechanisms and Regulatory Approaches

A special issue of Life (ISSN 2075-1729). This special issue belongs to the section "Plant Science".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2025 | Viewed by 216

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
College of Horticulture, Northwest A&F University, Yangling 712100, China
Interests: fruit postharvest biology and technology; plant hormones and their interactions
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
College of Horticulture, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, China
Interests: postharvest physiology and molecular biology; preservation technique; postharvest treatment
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Fruit softening is a complicated process that is accompanied by changes in fruit quality. These processes are regulated by enzymatic activities, gene expression, and environmental factors. The rapid development of omics and experimental techniques provides us with a new understanding of fruit softening and its underlying regulatory mechanisms. Significant advances have been achieved in relation to transcriptional level and post-transcriptional control, regarding phytohormones, transcription factors, DNA methylation, histone modifications, alternative splicing, RNA modification, protein modification, and others. However, there are still many theoretical problems that need to be solved, such as the interaction of different plant hormones to regulate fruit softening and quality change, the interaction between endogenous factors and environmental conditions, the network of regulatory mechanisms at different levels, etc. At present, the rapid development of new technological revolution such as AI has brought new opportunities for our research, providing new ideas and exploration paths for the research and development of more sophisticated storage and preservation technologies. The purpose of this Special Issue is to present the recent advances in regulation mechanisms of fruit softening and quality maintenance, especially the multifaceted toolkit for preserving fruit quality.

Dr. Qinggang Zhu
Dr. Yaxiu Xu
Guest Editors

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Keywords

  • fruit softening
  • fruit quality
  • fruit flavor
  • molecular mechanisms
  • regulatory approaches

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Published Papers (1 paper)

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Research

11 pages, 2968 KiB  
Article
Physiological and Transcriptome Analysis Revealed the Effect of ABA on Promoting Persimmon Fruit Postharvest Deastringency
by Han Zhou, Jiao-Jiao Nie, Meng-Lin Ren, Yu-Duan Ding, Ya-Xiu Xu and Qing-Gang Zhu
Life 2025, 15(7), 1027; https://doi.org/10.3390/life15071027 - 27 Jun 2025
Viewed by 112
Abstract
Persimmon (Diospyros kaki Thunb.) fruit can accumulate proanthocyanidins (tannins) during development, which causes astringency and affects consumption. The hormone abscisic acid (ABA) has been reported to play a key role in fruit ripening and softening. However, the effect of ABA on postharvest [...] Read more.
Persimmon (Diospyros kaki Thunb.) fruit can accumulate proanthocyanidins (tannins) during development, which causes astringency and affects consumption. The hormone abscisic acid (ABA) has been reported to play a key role in fruit ripening and softening. However, the effect of ABA on postharvest persimmon fruit deastringency remains unclear. In this study, we found that 300 mg/L ABA treatment could decrease the content of soluble tannins, thus leading removal of persimmon fruit astringency. The contents of acetaldehyde and ethanol did not increase during the storage time, indicating that ABA treatment-promoted persimmon fruit deastringency was not due to the acetaldehyde interaction with soluble tannins. Furthermore, the transcriptome analysis showed that 6713 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were identified, and the WGCNA (weighted gene co-expression network analysis) showed that one module, which comprises 575 DEGs, significantly correlated with the contents of soluble and resoluble tannins. The analysis based on the carbohydrate metabolism pathway indicated that 37 differentially expressed structural genes involved in acetaldehyde metabolism were upregulated by ABA. Real-time quantitative PCR showed that the previously reported key genes, including structural genes and transcription factors, were all upregulated by ABA treatment. The obtained results indicate that ABA treatment, promoting persimmon fruit astringency removal, may occur through gel polymerization of cell wall materials with soluble tannins. Full article
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