The effect of chilling injury-inducing storage conditions on quality and consumer acceptance of different Prunus persica cultivars

• Cold storage (CS) induced greater ethylene production and altered normal softening.
• Fruit producing higher amounts of ethylene after CS showed lower mealiness incidence.
• Chilling injury-inducing storage negatively influenced consumer acceptability.
• Consumer acceptability was mainly related to total soluble solids and firmness.

Few information is available about how chilling injury-inducing storage affects quality and consumer acceptance of different peach/nectarine cultivars and its possible relationship with altered physiological or ripening-related events. Accordingly, this study investigated the effect of chilling injury (CI)-inducing temperatures (4 °C during 21 days) on ethylene production, firmness loss, ACC oxidase (ACO) activity, antioxidant capacity, chilling injury symptoms such as mealiness or flesh browning, sensory attributes and consumer acceptance of six melting (‘Ambra’, ‘Nectaross’, ‘Rome Star’, ‘Big Top’, ‘Honey Royale’ and ‘Sweet Dream’) and a stony-hard (SH; ‘Ghiaccio-1’) peach/nectarine cultivars, over two consecutive seasons (2011–2012). Cold storage at 4 °C induced greater ethylene production and ACO activity accompanied by greater firmness loss in all cultivars except for the SH phenotype. Antioxidant capacity slightly decreased in response to cold storage, but increased during shelf life (20 °C) after 1 or 3 days to reach similar levels than those observed in non-cold stored fruit. The greatest capacity of the fruit to produce ethylene after cold storage was associated to lower mealiness incidence. For most cultivars, chilling injury-inducing storage negatively influenced the consumer acceptability. However, no clear relationships were found between the antioxidant capacity, the pattern of firmness loss and the development of chilling injury symptoms.