Some preliminary experiments carried out with synthetic AITC showed that the exposure to AITC vapours at a concentration of 0.1 mg L−1 for 4 h had no phytotoxic effect on strawberry fruit and a significant reduction of infection (P < 0.018) over 45%,
if compared to the control.
On the contrary, treatments with AITC concentration of 0.2 mg L−1 for 2 or 3 h or 0.1 mg L−1 for 6 h did not improve efficacy of grey mould infection control compared to results obtained with 0.1 mg L−1 for 4 h (data not shown).
Therefore,treatment conditions were established at AITC 0.1 mg L−1 and 4 h for all subsequent trials.