A successful biocontrol agent must be an aggressive colonizer with better competence and robust enough to survive in storage conditions in its application ,
while not impairing quality properties of fruit.
As shown in Fig. 6, the strain SG-6 failed to grow at a low temperature (6 ◦C),
but it still survived on citrus fruit for a long period of time.
At the higher temperature(25 ◦C), the bacterium was found to grow rapidly,
suggesting that strain SG-6 successfully colonized targeted fruit tissues and displayed biocontrol function.
This might be the reason that why the in vivo activity of strain SG-6 was found to be more active at this temperature. Moreover, strain SG-6 significantly reduced natural development of decay of citrus fruit following storage at 25 ◦C for 4
weeks or 6 ◦C for 4 weeks followed by 25 ◦C for 2 weeks compared with the control,
and did not impair fruit quality properties.
The data from this study suggests that strain SG-6 has good potential to be developed as a new biocontrol agent for green mold control on citrus fruit.