Paper Title
EFFECT OF SALICYLIC ACID ON CONTROL OF POSTHARVEST DISEASE (BOTRYTIS CINEREA) OF TOMATO FRUITS

Abstract
Abstract - This study systematically reviews that Salicylic acid enhanced stress tolerance, maintains firmness and reduced decay in tomato fruit. The fruits were wounded and treated with SA at low concentrations (0.2, 0.5 and 1.0 mM SA) and high concentrations (10, 20 and 30 mM SA), whilst the sterilized fruits with 10% ethanol solutions were included as control in the experiment. The fruits were inoculated with Botrytis Cinerea spores 10 minutes after the treatments and incubated at 10℃±1℃ and 85 – 90% relative humidity for 17 days in every succession. The result revealed that treatments with high concentrations of SA have the greater inhibition effect of Botrytis cinerea on the tomato fruits. While the low concentration treatments resulted to a marginal inhibition effect and shows no much significant difference with the control (Appendix I). Statistically significant (p<0.05) minimum lesion diameter was observed on fruits treated with 20 and 30mM SA as compared to 10 mM SA. The mixed Anova result has shown there is a significant effect of SA concentration on lesion diameter. Similarly there is significant effect of time on lesion diameter, the interaction between time and SA concentration is also significant. Finally, postharvest treatment with SA and increase in concentrations has enormous potential use as an alternative to chemical fungicides in inhibiting postharvest decay on tomato fruits and possibly prolong the shelf life. Thus, the findings have significant contribution to reduce economic postharvest losses of perishable fruit and evidence to researchers. Keywords - Botrytis Cinerea, Salicylic Acid, Tomato Fruits, Postharvest Treatment. OBJECTIVE The main objective of this study is to determine the most effective post-harvest treatment on tomato fruits subjected to wounding and infected with Botrytis cinerea using different concentrations of Salicylic acid (SA). Also to ascertain the role of SA on induced disease resistance to Grey Mould in tomato fruits.