CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Fungal diseases in the postharvest of fruits and vegetables can cause losses of up to 50%. The repeated use of synthetic fungicides has generated the development of resistant strains; this situation stimulated us to search alternatives to their use with the aim of reducing their application. Thus, the aim of this work was to evaluate the antifungal activity of hexanic (Hex) and methanolic (MeOH) extracts from pecan nut (Carya illionensis) (NP) and peanut (Arachis hypogaea) (M) shells against the Botrytis cinerea fungus in strawberry postharvest. In vitro tests were carried out with the extracts at different concentrations. For the ex vivo tests, ten strawberries were used per treatment, which were previously disinfected with NaClO 1% v/v. The fruits were inoculated with 10 μl of a 105 CFU/mL conidial solution in two wounds. Two controls (T0 and T1, water and the synthetic fungicide carbendazim) and four treatments (solutions of Hex-NP, MeOH-NP, Hex-M, MeOH-M, at 4000 ppm) were established. The treatments were applied by immersion twice (3 h and 24 h after inoculation). Incidence and severity of the disease, were recorded every day. The in vitro assay recorded an inhibition of B. cinerea. In the ex vivo test, the first symptoms showed on the second day. Treatments with peanut shell extracts showed a lower incidence of the disease compared to the T0 control; MeOH-M resulted in similar reduction infection values to T1 (42 and 47%, respectively). Regarding to severity disease reduction, MeOH-M once again showed the best performance, followed by the MeOH-NP treatment (64 and 59%, respectively). The results demonstrate that peanut shell extracts (mainly methanolic extract) could be an alternative for the formulation of a natural fungicide to reduce B. cinerea infection in strawberries.

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