| Abstract
| - As it is well-known, one of the main problems of modern agriculture is the postharvest fruit lossesdue to pathogen's attack and natural senescence during storage. Well established solutions to improvethis situation, such as, for example, storage under controlled conditions and the use of syntheticpesticides, are not free of problems due to human health risks and environmental effects caused bychemical pesticides. A new strategy to solve these problems consists of developing methods toimprove the natural plant resistance by using, upon their identification, the plant's own defensemolecules, in other words, applying methods based on the plant's own natural processes of pestsuppression to control spoilage. This requires the identification of components of the natural defenseresponse in plants, which, in turn, demands highly sensitive, fast, and versatile analytical methodsespecially for trace, nonvolatile, compounds. In this work a laser-based technique has been appliedfor screening the postharvest elicitation of resveratrol by Botrytis cinerea in grapes. Besides antifungalcharacter, resveratrol is known to present important antioxidant properties, which could also havepositive effects on fruit conservation during storage. Consequently, several experiments were carriedout in which exogenous application of resveratrol to several fruits maintained their postharvest quality.The quality of both resveratrol-treated and untreated fruits has been studied by the assessment ofthe biochemical composition and sensory analysis. Indeed, the present work demonstrates that theexternal application of resveratrol does not alter the sensorial and biochemical properties of the fruit. Keywords: Botrytis cinerea; fruit quality; laser spectrometry; plant natural pesticides; resveratrol
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