| Sumario: | ‘Rojo Brillante’ persimmon is sensitive to low temperature, the main symptom of chilling injury being a drastic firmness loss when fruit are transferred from low to shelf-life temperatures. Therefore, for cold storage of fruit is required the application of 1-MCP, as it has been described to alleviate chilling injury in persimmon. The recommended storage temperature for ‘Rojo Brillante’ is between 0ºC and 1ºC when 1-MCP is applied. However, significant differences in fruit firmness have been detected between storage at 0ºC or 1ºC. Moreover, after prolonged storage, changes in the flesh structure can be observed. Although persimmon texture is usually determined by puncture test determining the force necessary to break the flesh, other textural studies are needed to understand the flesh changes during cold storage. In this study, ‘Rojo Brillante’ persimmon was stored at 0ºC or 1ºC with or without 1-MCP. After 30, 60 and 90 days, the fruit was evaluated and other lot was submitted to deastringency treatment before transferring to 20ºC for 5 days, simulating shelf-life conditions. Fruit firmness was evaluated by a texturometer and a study of the typical force/time curve was carried out. Besides, a texture profile analysis (TPA) was performed to measure the parameters of hardness, adhesiveness, cohesiveness, springiness, chewiness, resilience, and gumminess. As expected, differences between fruit treated or not with 1-MCP was observed only after shelf-life simulation in both temperatures. Nevertheless, fruit stored at 0ºC showed higher firmness than those at 1ºC. The study of the force/time curves showed that the flesh breaking moment was highly dependent of the storage period, what was especially relevant in 1-MCP-fruit stored at 0ºC. The behaviour of the force/time curves and TPA parameters, especially gumminess and chewiness, indicated changes in the flesh structure that could reflect the appearance of flesh rubbery symptoms after prolonged cold storage periods.
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