Effect of exogenous ATP treatment on sucrose metabolism and quality of Nanguo pear fruit

Abstract Nanguo pear fruits were used as materials to investigate the effect of exogenous ATP treatment on the quality and sucrose metabolism during storage at room temperature (20 ± 1 °C, RH 45 ± 2%). The changes of weight loss, respiratory intensity, total soluble solids (TSS) content, flesh firmness and the activity of enzymes in sucrose metabolism were studied. The results indicated that ATP at 0.8 mM effectively inhibited respiratory intensity, suppressed the decrease of TSS content and flesh firmness of Nanguo pear fruit. ATP treatment also enhanced the activity of acid invertase (AI), neutral invertase (NI), sucrose synthase-cleavage (SS-synthesis), and sucrose synthase-synthesis (SS-cleavage) in Nanguo pear fruit. These results suggest that ATP treatment can maintain the quality of Nanguo pear fruit by modulating the activity of enzyme in sucrose metabolism.