Take aspirin for a longer life – if you are a pear

1NEWS FROM AGRICULTURE AND LIFE SCIENCES DIVISION, LINCOLN UNIVERSITY

Take aspirin for a longer life – if you are a pear

Have you ever wished that your pears would keep fresh for longer? Well, scientists from Lincoln University have been trialling the use of aspirin, and, surprisingly it is showing potential to help with this problem.

In a first for New Zealand, visiting Chinese scientist, Professor Zhang YuXing from Hebei Agricultural University College of Horticulture in China and Lincoln University’s horticulturist Mike Morley-Bunker have been investigating the use of an aspirin (salicylic acid) soak to extend the keeping quality of pears.

“Consumers increasingly want to buy high quality longer lasting fruit but are concerned about some of the treatment chemicals used at present,” said Morley- Bunker.

“What we are doing, is responding to consumer preference by searching for natural plant products that can be used to enhance the keeping quality of fruits and vegetables.

Salicylic acid (a phenolic antioxidant) is produced naturally by many fruits, vegetables and flowers and has a number of roles in flower development and the ripening of fruit, including helping them resist attack by micro-organisms and retaining freshness.

Professor Zhang measured the weight, firmness and the sugar content of the pears. Then he placed some of them in a dilute solution of salicylic acid for 24 hours, stored them at room temperature for two weeks (to replicate what happens in the home) and then repeated the measurements.

“We were very pleased to find that the treated pears had decayed (called senescence) much less than the untreated pears we used as controls,” said Professor Zhang.

Morley-Bunker said that as soon as pears are picked they start a natural process of slow decay and with this treatment they were able to slow this process further and, most importantly, not cause any changes in the taste or appearance of the pears.

“We were familiar with the use of aspirin to extend the life of floral arrangements but we were not able to find anybody else in the world who had treated just the outside of the pears, so we weren’t sure whether it would work, but it did,” said Morley-Bunker.

“We know that the physiological changes during fruit senescence involve a decrease in respiration rate and the production of ethylene, so we were hoping that our treatment would put the brake on these changes and delay senescence and this is what appears to have happened.”

An interesting feature of this study is that the pear variety Professor Zhang used for this study (Taylor’s Gold) was discovered in an orchard in Nelson in the 1980s. Taylor’s Gold is thought to be a naturally occurring mutation (known as a sport) of a common European pear, Doyenne du Comice.

Taylor’s Gold pears are gaining popularity through the world, including North America but, interestingly, Morley-Bunker says they never develop the same rich bronze colour as those grown in New Zealand.

Professor Zhang is an expert in summer fruits, specialising in pears and in post- harvest quality, and is a horticulturist at Hebei Agricultural University College of Horticulture. He was sponsored by the Chinese Government to spend six months at Lincoln University to improve his English and to undertake a short research project, which he then wrote up and presented in English

ENDS

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