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Hydrogen Sulfide Maintains Good Nutrition and Delays Postharvest Senescence in Postharvest Tomato Fruits by Regulating Antioxidative Metabolism

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Abstract

As a signaling molecule, hydrogen sulfide (H2S) plays an indispensable role in the modulation of ripening and senescence in fruits and vegetables. To explore the role of H2S in regulating metabolism of postharvest tomato, ripening-related physiological parameters, activities of antioxidant enzymes and gene expression were analyzed in H2S-fumigated tomato fruits. These results show that H2S significantly delayed the color transition and softening of tomato fruit, and maintained higher level of flavonoids and lower level of anthocyanin during storage. Besides, H2S could maintain higher level of nutritional-related metabolites, such as reducing sugar, ascorbic acid during postharvest storage. Moreover, H2S decreased the rate of O2− production, inhibited the production of H2O2 and malondialdehyde (MDA), enhanced the activities of antioxidant enzymes including ascorbate peroxidase (APX), superoxide dismutase (SOD), catalase (CAT) and guaiacol peroxidase (POD) in tomato fruits, while reduced the activities of phenylalanine ammonia lyase (PAL), polyphenol oxidase (PPO) and lipoxygenase (LOX). Besides, the expression of the antioxidant-encoding genes SlCAT2, SlPOD12 was generally upregulated with H2S fumigation. Principal component analysis (PCA) suggests that H2S induced significant discrepancy mainly to the differences in firmness, anthocyanin, flavonoid and the activity of guaiacol peroxidase (POD), and the correlation analysis further shows that H2S affected pigment metabolism and nutritional quality. In conclusion, H2S could maintain better appearance and nutritional quality, and prolong the storage period of postharvest tomato fruits through activating the antioxidative system.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (31970200, 31970312, 31901993, 31670278 and 51807046), National Key R&D Program of China (2019YFD1000103), the Earmarked Fund for the China Agriculture Research System (CARS-10-B1), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (JZ2020YYPY0249), the Natural Science Foundations of Anhui Province (1908085MC72), the Key Research and Development Program of Anhui Province (201904a06020031) and National Undergraduate Training Programs for Innovation of China (202010359064, S202010359221).

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  1. Ting-Ying Zhong and Gai-Fang Yao authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Food and Biological Engineering, Hefei University of Technology, Hefei, 230009, China

    Ting-Ying Zhong, Gai-Fang Yao, Sha-Sha Wang, Ting-Ting Li, Ke-Ke Sun, Yan-Hong Li, Xiao-Yan Chen, Lan-Ying Hu, Hua Zhang & Kang-Di Hu

  2. Xuzhou Institute of Agricultural Sciences of the Xuhuai District of Jiangsu Province, Xuzhou, 221131, China

    Jun Tang, Zhong-Qin Huang & Feng Yang

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  1. Ting-Ying Zhong
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Contributions

K.D.H. and H.Z. conceived and designed the experiments; T.Y.Z., G.F.Y., S.S.W., T.T.L., K.K.S., performed the experiments; K.D.H., T.Y.Z., G.F.Y., S.S.W., T.T.L., K.K.S. analyzed the data; T.Y.Z. and K.D.H. wrote the paper; T.Y.Z., K.D.H., H.Z., J.T., Z.Q.H., F.Y., X.Y.C., Y.H.L. and L.Y.H. interpreted the data and revised the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Kang-Di Hu.

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Zhong, TY., Yao, GF., Wang, SS. et al. Hydrogen Sulfide Maintains Good Nutrition and Delays Postharvest Senescence in Postharvest Tomato Fruits by Regulating Antioxidative Metabolism. J Plant Growth Regul 40, 2548–2559 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00344-021-10377-4

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