Review about postharvest management of jujube

Fresh jujube fruit is popular in the food market due to its delicious flavor, crisp texture, and high nutritional values. However, fresh jujube fruit is susceptible to quality deterioration in the postharvest supple chain due to its ripening and senescence, chilling injury, mechanical injury, fungal decay and their combination, which cumulatively leads to quality loss including water loss, softening, browning and even decay. In order to maintain the postharvest quality and extend the shelf-life of fresh jujube, effective postharvest technologies involving quality assessment, and preservation treatments are essential. This review presents postharvest physiological characteristics of jujube fruit, analyses the process of quality deterioration including water loss, browning, chilling injury, mechanical injury and pathogenic microorganisms, summarizes the non-destructive assessment technologies and preservation strategies for fresh jujube fruit including physical and chemical treatment as well as biological control. The quality degradation process of fresh jujube fruit is complex, which is affected by its internal quality and storage conditions. In order to achieving better preservation quality, multi-effect treatments and composite methods such as physical techniques combined with chemical treatments or biological control strategies are highly recommended.IntroductionJujube (Ziziphus jujuba Mill.), commonly known as Chinese date, is an important domesticated fruit with great economic, ecological, and social values. Jujube has been cultivated for more than 4000 years in China. In China, the cultivation area of jujube was more than 3 million hectares with an annual yield of over 7 million tons, accounting for 98% of the world production (Shen et al., 2021). Jujube is also found in South Korea, Iran, North Africa, Israel, the United States and the Middle East (Liu et al., 2020). This fruit attracts the attention of consumers because of its delicious taste, susceptive aroma, and high nutritional value (Rashwan et al., 2020). Jujube fruit contain abundant nutrients including polysaccharides, amino acids, ascorbic acid, triterpenic acids, flavonoids, phenolic acids, and mineral components. Moreover, previous scientific evidences have revealed that jujube fruit have the potential to treat different diseases due to its various biological activities such as antioxidant activity, anti-inflammatory, antibacterial, and anticancer properties (Bao et al., 2021; Gao et al., 2013). Historically, jujube fruit can be consumed both as dried and fresh fruit, and fresh jujube is warmly welcomed because its high nutrient substances and more delicious taste, however, the development of fresh jujube has been neglected due to its limited shelf-life. In recent 30 years, increased cultivation and supply of fresh jujube have been witnessed owing to the improvement of jujube fruit preservation technology and marketing logistics level. Fresh jujube is a perishable product with a short postharvest life, especially for fully mature jujube fruit, less than one week when preserved at ambient temperature (Yang et al., 2022; Zhao et al., 2020a). Fresh jujube faces great challenges after harvest due to the metabolic activities that hasten rapid ripening and senescence, mechanical injury, chilling injury and impacts of microbial decay (Deng et al., 2022; Nikkhah and Hashemi, 2020; Yu, 2020; Zhang et al., 2020a). As a result, fresh jujube is vulnerable to water loss and softening, alcoholic fermentation, browning, surface pitting and even decomposition, all of which individually or collectively lead to noticeable postharvest losses during the supply chain (Sang et al., 2022a; Zhao et al., 2021). So far, interdisciplinary studies have been investigated to promote improvement in postharvest technological innovation and such a situation will persist in the future to achieve a balance between supply and demand in the fresh jujube industry. Fruit quality such as maturity and its related indicators including shape, color, maturity, texture, acid content and internal defect, not only is important factors influencing consumers? appreciation but also play a significant effect on quality of jujube fruit during storage. For instance, jujube harvested at the half-red maturity stage was reported to preserve better sensory quality than that harvested at the white and red stage (Zhao et al., 2021). Furthermore, fruits with internal damages are susceptible to decay and pathogenic fungi infection (Al-Dairi et al., 2022). Traditionally, quality assessments of fruits and vegetables were conducted by visual inspection and destructive methods. After tremendous efforts, non-destructive methods, as a tool for measurement and instrumentation, have elevated the status of science, particularly in the food sector. To the best of our knowledge, there is still limit systematic and comprehensive review for post-harvest process of fresh jujube fruit. The present work attempts to review recent understanding concerning physiological and biochemical changes, mechanical injury, postharvest disease, and present postharvest technologies including non-destructive detection and preservation technologies during handling and storage. This review further discusses investigation gaps and future research prospects of researches on postharvest technologies in jujube fruit. ContentsPostharvest physiological characteristicsWater loss and softeningQuality attributesPreservation methodsConclusion and future perspectives Picture is the graphical abstractSourceRecent advances and development of postharvest management research for fresh jujube fruit: A reviewJin-Feng Dou, Xiao-Hong Kou, Cai-E.Wu, Gong-Jian Fan, Ting-Ting Li, Xiao-Jing Li, Dan-Dan Zhou, Zhi-Cheng Yan & Jin-Peng ZhuScientia Horticulturae, Volume 310, 15 February 2023, 111769https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scienta.2022.111769Get rights and contenthttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304423822008780