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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article

Front. Plant Sci.
Sec. Crop and Product Physiology
Volume 15 - 2024 | doi: 10.3389/fpls.2024.1492575
This article is part of the Research Topic Enhancing Berry Fruit Quality: Unraveling the Influence of Preharvest and Postharvest Factors View all 6 articles

Elucidation of pineapple softening based on cell wall polysaccharides degradation during storage

Provisionally accepted
Fengjun Li Fengjun Li 1Xingzhou Xia Xingzhou Xia 1Lilang Li Lilang Li 1Longlong Song Longlong Song 1Yuping Ye Yuping Ye 1Yueming Jiang Yueming Jiang 2Hai Liu Hai Liu 1*
  • 1 Guangdong Ocean University, Zhanjiang, China
  • 2 South China Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS), Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    Experiments were conducted to investigate tThe degradation of cell wall polysaccharides in pineapple fruit during softening was investigated in the present study. Two pectin fractions and two hemicellulose fractions were extracted from the cell wall materials of 'Comte de Paris' pineapple fruit at five softening stages, and their compositional changes were subsequently analyzed. The process of softening of the fruit corresponded to an increase in the water-soluble pectin (WSP) and 1 M KOHsoluble hemicellulose (HC1) fractions, and a decrease in the acid-soluble pectin (ASP) fraction, which suggested the solubilization and conversion of cellular wall components. However, the content of 4 M KOH-soluble hemicellulose (HC2) decreased and then returned to the initial level. Furthermore, WSP, ASP, and HC1 showed an increment in the content of low molecular weight polymers while a decline in the high molecular weight polymers throughout softening, and not significant change in the contents of different molecular polymers of HC2 was observed. Moreover, the galacturonic acid (GalA) content in the main chain of WSP was maintained at a relatively constant levelbasically, but the major branch monosaccharide galactose (Gal) in WSP decreased. Different from WSP, the molar percentages of Gal and GalA in ASP decreased. The Gal or Arabinose (Ara) in HC1 exhibited a gradual declinetended to decrease gradually while the molar percentages of xylose (Xyl) and glucose (Glu) in the main chain increased. These suggested that the main chain of ASP degraded while the branched chains of ASP, WSP and HC1 depolymerized during pineapple softening. Overall, fruit softening of 'Comte de Paris' pineapple was found to be the result ofinvolved in differential modification of pectin and hemicellulose.

    Keywords: Pineapple, Fruit softening, Cell Wall, Polysaccharide Degradation, quality maintenance 1. Introduction

    Received: 07 Sep 2024; Accepted: 14 Oct 2024.

    Copyright: © 2024 Li, Xia, Li, Song, Ye, Jiang and Liu. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Hai Liu, Guangdong Ocean University, Zhanjiang, China

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