Hot water treatment or UV-C irradiation alone cannot
completely control postharvest disease in fruit. However, combinations
of these treatments may achieve a satisfactory level of
disease control. Combinations may even have a synergistic effect on
fruit for several reasons: (1) the hot water treatment may partially
disinfect the fruit surface; (2) UV-C irradiation may induce resistance
to pathogens; and (3) combinations of hot water and UV-C
may enhance the efficiency to control postharvest disease. In a
previous study, combinations of these two treatments were applied
to crops, such as strawberries (Pan et al., 2004) and eggplant
(Karasahin et al., 2005), and the results showed that the combination
treatment helped to reduce postharvest disease and maintain
the quality of fresh p