1. Introduction
Penicillium digitatum is a major postharvest pathogen of citrus while blue mould, caused by Penicillium expansum, is a devastating postharvest pathogen of pome fruit. While these pathogens are usually host specific, under some conditions, P. expansum is able to infect oranges ( Vilanova et al., 2012). Both pathogens are necrotrophs and require a wound in the epidermis to enter fruit tissue and initiate infection ( Kavanagh and Wood, 1967 and Spotts et al., 1998). Since conidia of Penicillium species are ubiquitous in the atmosphere of packinghouses ( Barkai-Golan, 1966), fruit infection can occur via injuries caused during harvest, transport, packinghouse manipulation, or storage. Therefore, good sanitation and handling practices in both the field and packinghouse are critical. In addition to these preventive actions, drenching and fogging treatments with chemical fungicides represent the main method used to control these fungi. The use of chemical fungicides, however, is becoming increasingly more restricted because of environmental and health concerns, as well as due to the development of fungal resistance. New approaches, based on the innate resistance of the fruit, need to be explored in order to reduce the use of chemical fungicides so that they can be applied only when strictly necessary (Ballester et al., 2010).
Wounding is a common occurrence in plants resulting from both abiotic factors such as wind, rain and hail, as well as biotic factors such as insect and herbivore feeding, and in the case of agricultural commodities, cultural manipulation (Cheong et al., 2002). Plants exhibit a variety of defence strategies in response to wounding in order to prevent pathogen invasion. In fruit tissues, these wound-induced defence responses may be modulated by ripening (Su et al., 2011). Wound responses in plants have been extensively studied (Leon et al., 2001 and Schilmiller and Howe, 2005) and it is has been hypothesized that plants have evolved mechanisms that integrate both pathogen-specific and general wounding responses (Castro-Mercado et al., 2009). In support of this idea, studies have shown that wounding regulates a number of genes that are associated with a pathogen-specific response (Durrant et al., 2000 and Reymond et al., 2000), indicating that innate and pathogen-specific responses share a number of components in their signalling pathways (Maleck and Dietrich, 1999).
The initial stages of a plant's response to an invading pathogen will determine the degree of colonization and the extent of damage (Gayoso et al., 2010). Limiting pathogen establishment and colonization depends on a rapid and efficient deployment of defence responses (Ferreira et al., 2006) which will be modulated depending on whether the host-pathogen interaction involves a compatible or incompatible pathogen. Recognition of a pathogen may lead to the activation of defence mechanisms, such as a hypersensitive response, an oxidative burst, and the upregulation of pathogenesis-related (PR) genes (Albrecht and Bowman, 2008).
An oxidative burst is a rapid generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) and is one of the earliest events that widely occurs during a plant-pathogen interaction. It has been implicated in many different processes related to host-pathogen interactions (Shetty et al., 2008) and also plays an important role in wound response (Bradley et al., 1992). ROS production has been associated with the formation of physical defensive barriers in plant cell walls (Huckelhoven and Kogel, 2003) involving the formation of glycoproteins, callose, lignin, and other phenolic polymers (Lamb and Dixon, 1997).
The presence of lignin in plant tissue is recognized as a key factor in disease resistance to infections, serving as a strong mechanical barrier against pathogen invasion (Friend, 1976). Lignification occurs through a series of enzymatic steps involving the phenylpropanoid pathway, a pathway that generally contributes to a variety of plant responses to biotic and abiotic stimuli (Vogt, 2010). Phenylalanine ammonia-lyase (PAL) is the first enzyme in the phenylpropanoid pathway (Olson and Varner, 1993) leading to the synthesis of coumarins and flavonoids (Dixon et al., 2002). Ballester et al. (2011), in a study of citrus, focused on changes in PAL expression in response to a compatible pathogen (P. digitatum). They demonstrated that in addition to PAL, a large subset of genes are involved in the synthesis of phenylpropanoids and flavonoids, such as caffeic acid O-methyl-transferase (COMT), cinnamyl alcohol dehydrogenase (CAD), sinapyl alcohol dehydrogenase (SAD) and also peroxidase (POX), a terminal enzyme involved in the polymerization of lignin.
The aim of the present study was to investigate the process of wound response in citrus to both compatible, P. digitatum, and non-host, P. expansum, pathogen at different (i) maturity stages; and (ii) storage temperatures. Lignin content, as well as the expression of