Despite the fact that many studies have examined the effectiveness of different gaseous postharvest treatments applied at low temperature to maintain table grape quality, the use of ethanol vapor has hardly been investigated. Thus, this work has studied the effectiveness of ethanol vapor-generating sachets in the maintenance of It 681-30 table grape quality, a new cultivar, during storage at low temperature and after the shelf-life period at 20 °C. To this end, various quality assessments have been carried out and the effect of the ethanol treatment on the expression of different genes (phenylpropanoids, transcription factors, PRs, and aquaporins) was determined. The results indicated that the application of ethanol vapor reduced the total decay incidence, weight loss, and the rachis browning index in It 681-30 grapes stored at 0 °C and after the shelf-life period at 20 °C, as compared to non-treated samples. Moreover, the modulation of STS7 and the different PR genes analyzed seems to play a part in the molecular mechanisms activated to cope with fungal attacks during the postharvest of It 681-30 grapes, and particularly during the shelf-life period at 20 °C. Furthermore, the expression of aquaporin transcripts was activated in samples showing higher weight loss. Although further work is needed to elucidate the role of ethanol in table grape quality, the results obtained in this work provide new insight into the transcriptional regulation triggered by ethanol treatment.
Keywords: ethanol; fruit quality; gene expression; low temperature; table grapes.