Abstract
Sweet cherry producers annually confront climatic challenges such as spring frost and fruit cracking. This vulnerability arises primarily from spring frost during bloom or cracking at critical maturity stages during persistent rainfall. With changing climate patterns, innovative strategies are essential to mitigate these adversities. Foliar applications of melatonin (MT) at 0, 0.01, 0.05 and 0.1 mM were tested on the ‘Prime Giant’ and ‘Sweetheart’ cultivars over four different production cycles (2020–2023) to evaluate the effect on frost resilience on flower buds and fruit cracking reduction. MT-treated flower buds showed reduced malondialdehyde content and increased fruit set in most seasons, reducing their vulnerability to extreme weather events. In addition, MT consistently decreased sweet cherry cracking incidence across all studied seasons, indicating a strong effect between the fruit ripening stage and susceptibility to fruit cracking, which was cultivar dependent. Quality parameters at harvest, including fruit firmness, and colour at harvest, were either delayed or unaffected in MT-treated fruits compared with controls. However, other ripening parameters were stimulated by pre-harvest MT applications in several growing cycles, such as total soluble solids, which slightly reduced total acidity in MT-treated fruits. In summary, pre-harvest MT treatments can be a promising strategy for climate change adaptation and stress mitigation, potentially increasing sweet cherry production under extreme weather conditions. • Preharvest melatonin enhanced frost resistant reducing malondialdehyde levels in flower buds. • Melatonin application significantly decreased fruit cracking in sweet cherry cultivars. • Melatonin treated trees showed increased fruit firmness and delayed ripening. • Melatonin effects on total soluble solids and total acidity varied by cultivar and growing season.
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Claims 7
Claim · model-written summary
Melatonin reduced malondialdehyde in flower buds.
- Taxon
- Sweet cherry
Prunus aviumt0 - Organ / stage
- flower budse0
- Treatment
- MT-treatede0
- Outcome
- malondialdehyde contente0
- Direction
- reducede0
Not reportedComparator
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“MT-treated flower buds showed reduced malondialdehyde content and increased fruit set in most seasons”
t0“sweet cherry”
Claim · model-written summary
Melatonin increased fruit set in most seasons.
- Taxon
- sweet cherryPrunus aviumt0
- Treatment
- MT-treatede0
- Outcome
- fruit sete0
- Direction
- increasede0
- Qualifier
- in most seasonse0
Not reportedComparator
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“MT-treated flower buds showed reduced malondialdehyde content and increased fruit set in most seasons”
t0“sweet cherry”
Claim · model-written summary
Melatonin decreased fruit cracking incidence across seasons.
- Taxon
- sweet cherryPrunus aviume0
- Treatment
- MTe0
- Outcome
- sweet cherry cracking incidencee0
- Direction
- decreasede0
- Qualifier
- across all studied seasonse0
Not reportedComparator
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“MT consistently decreased sweet cherry cracking incidence across all studied seasons”
Claim · model-written summary
Melatonin delayed or did not affect fruit firmness and colour at harvest.
- Taxon
- sweet cherryPrunus aviumt0
- Treatment
- MT-treatede0
- Outcome
- fruit firmness, and colour at harveste0
- Direction
- delayed or unaffectede0
- Comparator
- controlse0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“Quality parameters at harvest, including fruit firmness, and colour at harvest, were either delayed or unaffected in MT-treated fruits compared with controls”
t0“sweet cherry”
Claim · model-written summary
Pre-harvest melatonin stimulated total soluble solids in several cycles.
- Taxon
- sweet cherryPrunus aviumt0
- Treatment
- pre-harvest MT applicationse0
- Outcome
- total soluble solidse0
- Direction
- stimulatede0
Not reportedComparator
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“other ripening parameters were stimulated by pre-harvest MT applications in several growing cycles, such as total soluble solids”
t0“sweet cherry”
Claim · model-written summary
Melatonin slightly reduced total acidity.
- Taxon
- sweet cherryPrunus aviumt0
- Treatment
- MT-treatede0
- Outcome
- total aciditye0
- Direction
- reducede0
Not reportedComparator
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“which slightly reduced total acidity in MT-treated fruits”
t0“sweet cherry”
Claim · model-written summary
The authors propose pre-harvest melatonin as a climate stress mitigation strategy.
- Taxon
- sweet cherryPrunus aviume0
- Outcome
- pre-harvest MT treatmentse0
Organisms pictured · Representative pictures of the matched species, not figures from the paper.
Verbatim
e0“pre-harvest MT treatments can be a promising strategy for climate change adaptation and stress mitigation, potentially increasing sweet cherry production under extreme weather conditions”
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See all 5 papers →Claims are grouped by organism, treatment and what was measured or targeted. A paper counts as positive when any of its claims in the group is positive.