Chemical composition and water permeability of fruit and leaf cuticles of Olea europaea L.

The plant cuticle, protecting against uncontrolled water loss, covers olive (Olea europaea) fruits and leaves. The present study describes the organ-specific chemical composition of the cuticular waxes and the cutin and compares three developmental stages of fruits (green, turning and black) with th...

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Bibliographic Details
Authors: Huang, Hua, Burghardt, Markus, Schuster, Ann-Christin, Leide, Jana, Lara Ayala, Isabel, Riederer, Markus
Format: article
Status:Versión aceptada para publicación
Publication Date:2017
Country:España
Institution:Varias* (Consorci de Biblioteques Universitáries de Catalunya, Centre de Serveis Científics i Acadèmics de Catalunya)
Repository:Recercat. Dipósit de la Recerca de Catalunya
OAI Identifier:oai:recercat.cat:10459.1/62725
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.jafc.7b03049
http://hdl.handle.net/10459.1/62725
Access Level:Open access
Keyword:Cold storage
cuticle
cutin
Prunus avium L.
Postharvest
Description
Summary:The plant cuticle, protecting against uncontrolled water loss, covers olive (Olea europaea) fruits and leaves. The present study describes the organ-specific chemical composition of the cuticular waxes and the cutin and compares three developmental stages of fruits (green, turning and black) with the leaf surface. Numerous organ-specific differences, such as the total coverage of cutin monomeric components (1034.4 µg/cm2 and 630.5 µg/cm2) and the cuticular waxes (201.6 µg/cm2 and 320.4 µg/cm2) among all three fruit stages and leaves, respectively, were detected. Water permeability as the main cuticular function was five-fold lower in adaxial leaf cuticles (2.1 x 10-5 m/s) in comparison to all three fruit stages (9.5 x 10-5 m/s). The three fruit developmental stages have the same cuticular water permeability. It is hypothesized that a higher weighted average chain length of the acyclic cuticular components leads to a considerably lower permeability of the leaf as compared to the fruit cuticle.