3.4. Effect of AITC treatment on TSS and TA contents of mulberry fruit
Different cultivars within a species could vary greatly in fruit quality. TSS is a fundamental quality in the assessment of quality and marketability of various fruit commodities during storage (Oz and Ulukanli, 2014). Initial amounts of TSS content of mulberry (M. alba, cv. Dashi) fruit in the present work was about 10.0%, that were higher than those reported by Iqbal et al. (2010) (7.42%), but lower than those of Oz and Ulukanli (2014) (23.1%). As shown in Fig. 4A, TSS contents of both the control and AITC treated samples decreased with the storage time. TSS contents of fruit treated with AITC at 0 (control), 5 and 15 μL L−1 decreased from the initial 10.0% to 7.60%, 9.20% and 9.27% on day 15, respectively. Higher TSS contents were observed in AITC-treated mulberry fruit in comparison with that of the control. A similar finding was reported by Wang and Chen (2010) that AITC treatment could maintain higher sugar contents in blueberry fruit during storage.