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Scientia Horticulturae
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/scihorti

The effect of maturity, sunburn and the application of sunscreens on the internal and external qualities of pomegranate fruit grown in Australia
Palitha Weerakkody a, Jenny Jobling *,b,c, Mara Magdalena Vergara Infante b, Gordon Rogers c
a

Department of Crop Science, Faculty of Agriculture, University of Peradeniya, Peradeniya 20400, Sri Lanka Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Natural Resources, Woolley Building A20, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia c Applied Horticultural Research, PO Box 3114, Bundeena, NSW 2230, Australia
b

A R T I C L E I N F O

A B S T R A C T

Article history: Received 15 July 2009 Received in revised form 22 September 2009 Accepted 8 December 2009 Keywords: Pomegranate Punica granatum Total phenolic content Antioxidant activity Sunburn

Consumer interest in pomegranate fruit (Punica granatum L.) is increasing in Australia as a result of its unique external and internal qualities. This work looked at the effect of applying sunscreen treatments to pomegranate fruit on the degree of sunburn damage and the effect of maturity and sunburn on the internal antioxidant concentration of the juice. The pomegranates, cultivar Wonderful were grown in Condobolin, New South Wales, Australia. The Kaolin based sunscreens Surround1 and Parasol1 signicantly reduced the severity of sunburn damage but treatment with Anti-stress-5001 did not. There was no signicant affect of the sunscreen treatments on the total phenolic content or total antioxidant activity of the juice. However sunburn damage did signicantly reduce both bioactive parameters in the juice. The results indicate that the sunburnt pomegranate fruit did not have the capacity to prevent oxidative stress as indicated by the visual damage and the reduced pool of soluble antioxidants in the juice. Total phenol content and the total antioxidant activity of the juice also decreased signicantly during fruit growth and maturity. More work is needed to determine the affect of sunscreen treatments on the internal quality of pomegranate juice grown under milder conditions. This work highlights how the physiological response of fruit to the environment impacts fruit quality both externally and internally. Crown Copyright 2009 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction The consumption of pomegranate fruit (Punica granatum L.) juice has been reported to have many positive health benets (Balasundram et al., 2006; Mertens-Talcott et al., 2006; Syed et al., 2007; Basu and Penugonda, 2009). The benets are largely reported to be the result of the high level of antioxidant capacity of the juice (Ricci et al., 2006). The principle antioxidant polyphenols in pomegranate juice include the ellagitannins and anthocyanins. The concentration of these compounds in the juice has been reported to vary depending on the method of juice extraction, the cultivar and the stage of maturation and ripening (Basu and Penugonda, 2009; Mousavinejad et al., 2009; Shwartz et al., 2009). Pomegranates are a new crop in Australia. The new industry will provide both fresh fruit and fruit processed for juice. Around the

* Corresponding author at: University of Sydney Ofce 352, Level 3, Biomedical Building Australian Technology Park Eveleigh NSW 2015 Australia. Tel.: +61 2 862 71040. E-mail addresses: palithaw@pdn.ac.lk (P. Weerakkody), j.jobling@usyd.edu.au, jenny@ahr.com.au (J. Jobling).

world pomegranates are grown in Mediterranean climates often with very warm summers. In this work the pomegranates were grown in Condobolin which is located in Western New South Wales where summer temperatures can be over 40 8C for several days at a time (http://www.bom.gov.au/ climate/dwo/IDCJDW2032.latest.shtml). These high temperatures can cause sunburn damage to the outside skin of the fruit making then unsaleable. Melgarejo et al. (2004) have shown that the use of Kaolin sunscreen treatments can signicantly reduce sunburn damage. Similar results have been reported for apples (Wand et al., 2006; Gindaba and Wand, 2007). Our work looked at the effect of applying sunscreen treatments to pomegranate fruit on the degree of sunburn damage. We also looked at the effect of sunburn on the internal antioxidant concentration of the juice. Both factors are important in terms of fruit quality. High temperature stress in plants results in the production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) which cause oxidative stress (Ma et al., 2008). Plants protect themselves from the cytotoxic effects of the active oxygen species by antioxidant enzymes or metabolites such as glutathione, ascorbic acid and carotenoids which may scavenge reactive oxygen (Sairam et al., 2000; Ma et al., 2008). In pomegranate fruit protective antioxidant metabolites include

0304-4238/$ see front matter . Crown Copyright 2009 Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.scienta.2009.12.003

Please cite this article in press as: Weerakkody, P., et al., The effect of maturity, sunburn and the application of sunscreens on the internal and external qualities of pomegranate fruit grown in Australia. Sci. Hortic. (2010), doi:10.1016/j.scienta.2009.12.003

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polyphenols such as ellagitannins, tannins, anthocyanins and avonoids (Mertens-Talcott et al., 2006; Mousavinejad et al., 2009). The level of the antioxidant metabolites in plants changes in response to abiotic stress. For example, heating apple leaves from 28 to 40 8C increased the content of total ascorbate, ascorbic acid, total glutathione and glutathione initially but after a high temperature exposure of more than 2 h the contents of these antioxidant compounds declined (Ma et al., 2008). After 4 h at 40 8C the antioxidant content decreased to below that of the control leaves kept at 28 8C. Furthermore, in sunburnt apple peel an up-regulation of the antioxidant system in response to the increased reactive oxygen species generated by the high light and high temperature exposure was shown (Chen et al., 2008). However, the researchers concluded that the up-regulation in response to photooxidative stress was not enough to protect against the photooxidative damage and hence the resulting visual sunburn damage. The aim of this work was to evaluate the effectiveness of three commercial sunscreen treatments Parasol1 (Crop Care, Australia), Surround1 (Ag Nova Tech., Australia) and Anti-stress5001 (EnviroShield Products Co., USA) for preventing sunburn damage of pomegranate fruit grown in Condobolin, New South Wales, Australia. The experiment also looked at the effect of maturity and external sunburn on the antioxidant content of the fruit juice. 2. Materials and methods The experiments were carried out on a commercial orchard at Condobolin, New South Wales, Australia over 2 seasons. In both seasons the fruit was harvested from 3-year-old trees of the pomegranate cultivar Wonderful at 2 m 4 m spacing and managed using best commercial practice. In the 2008/09 season two northsouth oriented rows were used for two different experiments. During the summer the mean daytime temperature ranged from 20 to 45 8C in both seasons. Hence, fruit growing in the outer canopy were exposed to temperatures above 35 8C temperatures for at least a few hours per day during week 418 after fruit set (http://www.bom.gov.au/climate/dwo/IDCJDW2032.latest.shtml). 2.1. Fruit growth and quality trials In the rst season 200 fruits were harvested on 24 March 2008 and brought back to the laboratory at the University of Sydney overnight and were subsequently separated into two maturity groups, mature and immature, based on fruit background colour and size. In the 2008/09 season data fruit was collected at regular intervals from November 2008 to harvest 8 April 2009. In this trial 6 blocks of 12 trees were used. Fruits were tagged 2 weeks after fruit set and these fruits were subsampled by harvesting 10 fruits per block every 2 weeks from 2 to 23 weeks after fruit set and these fruits were brought back to the laboratory at the University of Sydney overnight. The assessment of fruit growth and quality was the same for 2008 and 2009. In the laboratory all the fruits were hand peeled and the husks where carefully cut at the equatorial zone with a sharp knife. Then the arils were manually extracted, weighed and processed with a commercial blender (Woolworths1, Australia). Then the blended extract was manually squeezed through two layers of gauze to extract the juice. For all fruit diameter, mass, mass of arils and volume of juice were recorded. A subsample of juice of 5 fruits per maturity were weighed and put into individual polypropylene conical tubes with capacity for 50 mL (Falcon1). These samples were used for the measurement of total soluble solids (%TSS), antioxidant capacity and total phenolic content.

The %TSS was determined using a hand held refractometer (N 63124, Atago Co., Japan) and circumference was measured with a plastic 30 cm-tape measure and mass determined using an electronic balance (PM1200, Mettler-Toledo GmbH, Giessen, Germany). The juice samples were frozen at 20 8C prior to analysis of antioxidant activity and total phenolic content. 2.2. Total phenolic content and antioxidant activity assays The total phenolic content was analysed using the Folin Ciocalteu method with gallic acid as the standard (Velioglu et al., 1998). The antioxidant activity of fruit juice was determined as the Ferric Reducing Ability of Plasma (FRAP) at low pH, based on the intense blue colour formation when Fe3+TPTZ complex is reduced to the ferrous form (Benzie and Strain, 1996). For the determination of the level of the total phenolic content and FRAP in the 2007/ 08 season a microplate spectrophotometer (Multiskan RC; Pathtech, Preston, Vic., Australia) was used and in the 2008/09 season a multiwell photometric plate reader (Bioscreen C, Labsystems Corp., Helsinki, Finland) was used in both cases the readings were taken at 600 nm. 2.3. Sunscreen trial Three sunscreen treatments were evaluated in the 2008/09 season. In this trial, laid out as a completely randomized bock design, there were 3 replicates of 12 trees per treatment. The sunscreen treatments were hand sprayed using a backpack sprayer to run-off to eight plants in the middle of each plot, keeping a twoplant wide buffer between plots. The sunscreen treatments Parasol1 (40 mL L1, active ingredient CaCO3; Crop Care, Australia), Surround1 (60 g L1, active ingredient Kaolinite; Ag Nova Tech., Australia) and Anti-stress5001 (14 mL L1, Acrylic copolymer, EnviroShield Products Co., USA) were applied at rates recommended by the manufacturers. Parasol1 and Surround1 left a white powdery residue on the fruit and foliage after each application while the Anti-stress-5001 treated trees had no visible residue. At harvest for the sunscreen trial all fruits on the trees were harvested and rated for the level of external damage due to sunburn. Each fruit was visually rated into three groups depending on the area of the fruit surface that was damaged due to sunburn. The groups were <10% of the area affected by sunburn (minimum), 1050% of the fruit surface area affected by sunburn (mild) and >50% of the fruit surface area affected by sunburn (severe). In addition ve fruits were taken from each treatment replicate and another ve fruits from each damage category from the untreated control replicated plots. The juice from these fruit was extracted as described previously for the total phenolic content and total antioxidant activity. 2.4. Statistical analysis For all the parameters measured, either a regression analysis or an analysis of variance (ANOVA) was performed and least signicant differences (5%) calculated using the general analysis of variance procedure in GenStat1 statistical software (10th edition, version 10.1.0707, Lawes Agricultural Trust, supplied by VSN International Ltd.). In all cases data was checked for normality, transformed where required before analysis and back transformed for presentation. 3. Results and discussion 3.1. Fruit growth and quality Fruit growth in 2008/09 in Condobolin showed that the increase in fruit mass was linear with the fruit reaching an average

Please cite this article in press as: Weerakkody, P., et al., The effect of maturity, sunburn and the application of sunscreens on the internal and external qualities of pomegranate fruit grown in Australia. Sci. Hortic. (2010), doi:10.1016/j.scienta.2009.12.003

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Fig. 1. Seasonal changes in fruit mass and juice content of pomegranate fruit 2008/09 in Condobolin NSW (vertical bars represent standard deviation of weekly means).

Fig. 3. Total antioxidant activity (FRAP mmol Fe2+ L1) of pomegranate fruit juice during fruit growth and ripening 2008/09 (vertical bars represent standard deviation of weekly means).

maximum mass of 675 g per fruit after 14 weeks (Fig. 1). The average yield of juice for those fruit at harvest was 37% of the total fruit mass. Shulman et al. (1984) reported a similar result with the cultivar Wonderful having a 110-day (14 week) period of fruit development and a juice content of 1840% depending on climatic conditions. The rate of fruit development varies with variety, growing location and season (Gil et al., 1995). Sweetness is an important quality attribute of pomegranate fruit. The TSS content of fruits differed between the two seasons. In the 2008/09 season the mean TSS increased from 8% 4 weeks after fruit set up to approximately 15.5% at harvest. In the 2007/08 season the fruit from Condobolin had a lower average TSS at harvest of only 12.2%. The difference may be due to a difference in harvest maturity as well as seasonality as other researchers have reported that the TSS of the cultivar Garnesh, increased from 13% in 40-day-old fruit and up to 15.3% in 140-day-old fruit (Kulkarni and Aradhya, 2005). For pomegranates used for juice the level of antioxidant activity is another important quality consideration in terms of bioactivity and taste. The polyphenol content includes esters of gallic acid which determines the astringency in the fruit (Ozawa et al., 1987). The loss of astringency is one of the principle changes that occur during ripening of many fruits and this change makes the fruit more palatable when ripe (Ozawa et al., 1987). However in terms of human health the higher the level of phenolic compounds the higher the total antioxidant activity of the fruit juice and its relative human health benet (Gil et al., 2000; Tzulker et al., 2007). In a commercial context there must be a compromise between bioactive content and taste. In the 2007/08 season the total phenol content signicantly differed in immature (1710 mg) and mature fruit (790 mg) declining by more than 50% during development. The more comprehensive results of the 2008/09 season showed a similar trend (Fig. 2). However, the total phenol content of the juice initially increased up to 10 weeks after fruit set and then rapidly declined again from 12 to 14 weeks after fruit set.

The same trend was reported by Kulkarni and Aradhya (2005) for the Garnesh cultivar of pomegranate. The researchers reported a rapid and signicant depletion in the total phenolic content from the initial stage (20 days) to full development (140 days) of the fruit, showing a 74% reduction. Other researchers have also reported a reduction in the level of total phenolic content during fruit growth and maturation in the arils and the peel (Kulkarni and Aradhya, 2005; Mirdehghan and Rahemi, 2007). The total antioxidant activity (FRAP) in 2007/8 also decreased with fruit maturation from 35.7 to 11.6 mmol Fe2+/L while the changes were less pronounced in 2008/09 season (Fig. 3). The difference is likely to be the result of seasonal variation. The total antioxidant activity is attributed to the levels of phenolic acids, ascorbic acid as well as anthocyanin and this is why the seasonal changes in total antioxidant activity are different to those seen for the total phenolic content (Kulkarni and Aradhya, 2005). Kulkarni and Aradhya (2005) reported that the phenolic compounds in pomegranate juice are used up in the biosynthesis of the avylium ring during anthocyanin pigment formation, leading to a reduction in their content but not a reduction in the level of total antioxidant activity. 3.2. Sunscreen trial The successful use of the Kaolin based sunscreen Surround1 to reduce losses in pomegranates due to sunburn has been reported by Melgarejo et al. (2004). This work was done in Spain using the pomegranate cultivar Mollar de Elche and the research showed that sunburn damage of fruits was reduced from 21.9% in the untreated control fruits to 9.4% in the Surround1 treated fruits. The treatment resulted in a white coating of the fruit and leaves but no difference was found in the average fruit diameter change over time for the treated and untreated fruit. In our work three sunscreens were trialled, one of which was Surround1. In our trial the pomegranate fruit harvested from the control and sunscreen treatments were placed into three categories based on the area of sunburn damage on the outside of the fruit. The distribution of damage across all treatments was that 43.5 3% of fruit had < 10% damage, 38.4 3% had 1050% damage and 18.1 6% had > 50% damage (Fig. 4). The damage in our trial was much higher than the damage reported by Melgarejo et al. (2004). The results showed that there was a signicant effect of the sunscreen treatments (p = 0.05) for the severely sunburn damaged fruit category (Fig. 4). Fruit treated with Surround1 (14.7%) and Parasol1 (12.8%) had signicantly lower numbers of fruit with severe damage compared to the control fruit (25.8%); the effect using the anti-stress 5501 (19%) was not signicant. There was no signicant increase in the percentage of fruit in the <10% sunburn category which is the fruit suitable for the fresh market.

Fig. 2. Total phenolic content of pomegranate fruit juice during fruit growth and ripening 2008/09 (vertical bars represent standard deviation of weekly means).

Please cite this article in press as: Weerakkody, P., et al., The effect of maturity, sunburn and the application of sunscreens on the internal and external qualities of pomegranate fruit grown in Australia. Sci. Hortic. (2010), doi:10.1016/j.scienta.2009.12.003

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Fig. 4. Distribution of the severity of damage of harvested fruits from sunscreen treated trees (vertical bars represent standard deviation of weekly means) (for 50 100% surface damage; LSD = 9.06, p = 0.05, values followed by a different letter are signicantly different).

temperatures during the growing season, actual skin temperatures were not measured. The Bureau of Meteorology data for the weather station closest to the farm shows that there were 14 days in a row at the end of January and beginning of February 2009 with daily maximum temperatures above 39 8C and 8 of those days had daily maximums above 42 8C. It has been reported that the initial stages of sunburn in apple skin occur when the surface temperature reaches 4649 8C in the presence of direct light (Wand et al., 2006); it is possible that the pomegranates used in this work may have experiences similar conditions. Sunburn is a sign of oxidative stress and so it is interesting that severely sunburnt fruit had a reduced pool of soluble antioxidants which indicates that those fruit did not have enough soluble antioxidants to prevent the visual damage occurring (Sairam et al., 2000) (Fig. 5). 4. Conclusion

The reason that the sunburn damage was so much higher in this work compared to that reported previously is likely the result of the fact that the fruits were from young trees (3 years old) where the canopy was not fully developed exposing a high proportion of the fruit to full sun and high daily temperatures. The results from the analysis of the juice showed that there was no signicant difference in the total phenolic content or the total antioxidant activity of the juice from fruit from the different sunscreen treatments when all damage categories were combined (data not shown). However, the juice taken from fruit with high levels of sunburn damage had a signicantly lower total phenolic content and total antioxidant activity than the juice taken from fruit with low levels of sunburn damage (Fig. 5). It is important to note that there are several different methods for quantifying total phenolic content and antioxidant activity in fruit juice. Martin et al. (2009) have recently developed a novel pomegranate standard for the quantication of pomegranate polyphenols. In our work the comparison of total phenols content and total antioxidant capacity was relative and more work would be needed to be done to accurately quantify the total phenol content and total antioxidant activity for sunburn damaged and undamaged pomegranate fruit juice. Our results support the work done on apple skin which showed that tissue exposed to a temperature of 40 8C for more than 2 h had a reduction in the level of soluble antioxidants (Ma et al., 2008). For the skin of the pomegranates to show visual signs of sunburn damage it indicates that the fruits were exposed to high

Pomegranate fruit quality is dependent on both external and internal qualities. This work shows how the internal bioactive quality of the juice relative to the total phenol content and antioxidant activity is dependent on fruit maturity and seasonal conditions. In hot seasons where temperatures cause sunburn reducing both the external and internal qualities of the fruit. Fruit with severe sunburn were shown to have a lower total phenol content and total antioxidant activity than undamaged fruit. The Kaolin based sunscreens Surround1 and Parasol1 signicantly reduced the severity of sunburn damage on pomegranate fruit. In this experiment there was no signicant affect of the sunscreen treatments on the total phenolic content or total antioxidant activity and this was due to the high severity of sunburn present in this trial. More work is needed to determine the affect of sunscreen treatments on the internal quality of the juice under milder conditions. This work illustrates how the physiological response of fruit to the environment, impacts fruit quality both externally and internally. Acknowledgements The authors would like to thank PMG Agriculture and Horticulture Australia Ltd. for their nancial support of this research and Dr. Dimitrios Zabaras from Food Science Australia for his assistance with the rst years data analysis. References
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Fig. 5. The effect of sunburn damage on the total phenolic content and antioxidant activity (FRAP mmol Fe2+ L1) of pomegranate juice (total phenolic content; LSD = 135.6, p = 0.05; antioxidant capacity; LSD = 5.55, p = 0.05, values for each parameter followed by a different letter are signicantly different).

Please cite this article in press as: Weerakkody, P., et al., The effect of maturity, sunburn and the application of sunscreens on the internal and external qualities of pomegranate fruit grown in Australia. Sci. Hortic. (2010), doi:10.1016/j.scienta.2009.12.003

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Please cite this article in press as: Weerakkody, P., et al., The effect of maturity, sunburn and the application of sunscreens on the internal and external qualities of pomegranate fruit grown in Australia. Sci. Hortic. (2010), doi:10.1016/j.scienta.2009.12.003