Postharvest Biology and Technology 79 (2013) 69–72

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Postharvest Biology and Technology

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Research note

Efficacy of ethanolic extract of propolis in maintaining postharvest quality of

dragon fruit during storage
Noosheen Zahid a , Asgar Ali a,∗ , Yasmeen Siddiqui b , Mehdi Maqbool a
a
Centre of Excellence for Postharvest Biotechnology (CEPB), School of Biosciences, The University of Nottingham Malaysia Campus, Semenyih, 43500 Selangor D. E., Malaysia
b
Laboratory of Food Crops and Floriculture, Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Universiti Putra Malaysia, Serdang 43400 Selangor D. E., Malaysia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Significant (P ≤ 0.05) differences were observed in dragon fruit quality when treated with different con-
Received 18 September 2012 centrations of ethanolic extract of propolis (EEP) (0.25, 0.50, 0.75 and 1.0%) and stored at 20 ± 2 ◦ C and
Accepted 11 January 2013 80 ± 5% relative humidity (RH) for 20 days. Fruit treated with 0.50% EEP showed the most promising
results, while fruit treated with 0.75 and 1.0% EEP showed some phytotoxic effects even after 8 days of
Keywords: storage. The results of gas exchange analysis also proved the efficacy of 0.50% EEP concentration. Thus, it
Antioxidant
can be concluded from the present investigation that EEP at 0.50% concentration could be used to extend
Decay incidence
the storage life of dragon fruit without any negative effects on the quality.
Dragon fruit
Propolis © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Postharvest quality

1. Introduction (EEP) on physicochemical changes, respiration rate and antioxidant

Propolis is a natural glue produced by honey bees with main
constituents being resins (flavonoids, phenolics and their esters),
waxes, vitamins and essential oils (Juliano et al., 2007). Due to
its chemical composition and antimicrobial properties, it is being
widely used in the pharmaceutical industry.
Dragon fruit [(Hylocereus polyrhizus) (Weber) Britton & Rose]
are gaining popularity in tropical and sub-tropical regions of the
world. However, it has a short shelf-life which limits its storage
time during transportation and marketing. The main factor which
reduces this storage life is high temperature, which results in high
respiration rates, rapid ripening and thus an early deterioration of
the fruit quality occurs (Nerd et al., 1999).
Low temperature storage is one of the main techniques used to
increase the shelf-life of fresh fruit and vegetables and it reduces
thermal decomposition and respiration processes. However, pro-
longed storage at low temperature causes chilling injury and also
contraction of the skin occurs as water from the skin of the fruit
moves into the pulp which lowers down the taste and also dam-
ages the fruit physiology. In the literature, there has been no study
reported on the use of propolis as a coating material to increase
the storage life of dragon fruit. Therefore, the present study was
conducted to analyse the effect of an ethanolic extract of propolis
∗ Corresponding author. Tel.: +60 3 8924 8219; fax: +60 3 8924 8018.
E-mail address: Asgar.Ali@nottingham.edu.my (A. Ali).
activity of dragon fruit during storage.
2. Materials and methods
Crude Chinese propolis was obtained from Yi Wang Honey Gar-
den (M) Sdn Bhd, Semenyih, Selangor, State of Malaysia. Dragon
fruit were collected from a commercial orchard located at Puchong,
Selangor, Malaysia. Extraction of propolis was done by using
ethanol (Lu et al., 2005). Fruit of uniform size and free from defects
were randomized to provide four replicates of 20 fruit for each
treatment. Fruit were dipped into EEP of different concentrations
(0.25, 0.50, 0.75 and 1.0%) along with 70% ethanol for 2 min, in order
to uniformly coat the EEP and ethanol onto the fruit surface. Control
fruit were dipped in purified water only. All the fruit were sub-
jected to air drying at ambient temperature (25 ± 2 ◦ C) followed by
packing and storage at 20 ± 2 ◦ C, 80 ± 5% RH for 20 days.
Weight loss, fruit firmness, soluble solids concentration (SSC),
titratable acidity (TA) and gas exchange analysis was done by the
method given by Maqbool et al. (2011). Total phenolic contents,
total flavonoids and ferric reducing antioxidant power (FRAP) were
estimated by using spectrophotometric method of Ali et al. (2013).
The decay percentage of the treated and untreated fruit was done
using the formula given by El-Anany et al. (2009).
Statistical analysis was performed using the computer soft-
ware MSTAT-C. The data were processed with the variance analysis
(ANOVA) according to Fisher’s least significant difference (LSD) test
at (P ≤ 0.05) to compare means between treated fruit and controls.

0925-5214/$ – see front matter © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.postharvbio.2013.01.003
70 N. Zahid et al. / Postharvest Biology and Technology 79 (2013) 69–72

Control a b
0.25% EEP
35 35
0.50% EEP
0.75% EEP
30 1.0% EEP 30

25 25

Fruit firmness (N)

Weight loss (%)

20 20

15 15

10 10

5 5

0 0

c d
30 0.8

25
Soluble solids concentration (%)

0.6
20 Titratable acidity (%)

15 0.4

10
0.2
5

0 0.0

100 e 1.0 f

80 0.8
Ethylene (µg kg hr)
-1
CO2 (mg kg hr )
-1

-1

60 0.6
-1

40 0.4

20 0.2

0 0.0
0 4 8 12 16 20 0 4 8 12 16 20
Storage time (Days) Storage time (Days)

Fig. 1. Effect of different concentrations of EEP on (a) weight loss, (b) fruit firmness, (c) soluble solids concentration, (d) titratable acidity, (e) CO2 production and (f) ethylene
production of dragon fruit during 20 days of storage at 20 ± 2 ◦ C and 80 ± 5% RH. Values are the mean ± SE.

3. Results
Fig. 1a indicates that the dragon fruit treated with EEP showed
significantly (P ≤ 0.05) lower weight loss than that of the control
fruit. The weight loss increased gradually with an increase in stor-
age time. However, the minimum weight loss (13.4%) was observed
in the fruit treated with 0.50% EEP concentration after 20 days
of storage. The highest weight loss was observed in control fruit
(31.61%). On the other hand, the fruit treated with ethanol showed
a similar weight loss to that in the control fruit (data not shown).
The fruit treated with EEP showed significantly (P ≤ 0.05) higher
firmness than that of the untreated control fruit (Fig. 1b). The high-
est firmness (20.90 N) was recorded in fruit treated with 0.50%
EEP. Similarly, significantly (P ≤ 0.05) higher SSC value (24.20%) was
recorded in the control fruit as compared to the fruit treated with
EEP (Fig. 1c). While the lowest SSC value (18.98%) was recorded in
0.50% EEP treated dragon fruit. The results regarding titratable acid-
ity (TA) showed that there was a significant (P ≤ 0.05) decrease in TA
 N. Zahid et al. / Postharvest Biology and Technology 79 (2013) 69–72 71

0.35
Control in control fruit (0.05%) followed by the fruit treated with 1.0% EEP
Total phenolics (µg gallic acid g fresh wt. of fruit)
0.25% EEP
(0.12%) (Fig. 1d). A continuous decrease in CO2 concentration was
0.50% EEP
0.30 0.75% EEP a observed in all treatments (Fig. 1e). A sudden decrease in CO2 was
1.0% EEP observed on 12 days in all but the highest decrease was observed
0.25 in control fruit. While a sudden increase was observed on day 16
of storage in all treatments except the fruit treated with 0.50%
-1

0.20 EEP. Similarly, a continuous decrease in ethylene concentration was

observed in all treatments (Fig. 1f). The sigmoidal behavior of eth-
0.15
ylene production in control fruit was observed followed by the fruit
treated with 0.75 and 1.0% EEP. A sudden increase in ethylene was
0.10
observed on day 12 of storage in control fruit and fruit treated with
0.05 0.75 and 1.0% EEP. A significant (P ≤ 0.05) decrease in total phenolic
content, total flavonoids and total antioxidant was observed in con-
0.00 trol fruit followed by 1.0% EEP treated fruit, while a slow decrease
was observed in fruit treated with 0.50% EEP (Fig. 2a–c).
The symptoms of decay on the control fruit and the fruit treated
1.8
Total flavonoids (µg quercentin g fresh wt. of fruit)

with 0.75 and 1.0% EEP started on day 8 of the storage (Table 1).
1.6 The bracts of the fruit treated with 0.75 and 1.0% EEP turned yellow
b after 8 days of storage, and later on turned into black colour.
1.4

1.2
-1

4. Discussion
1.0

0.8 The increase in weight loss in fruit treated with higher concen-
tration of EEP might be due to the heat generation which causes
0.6
the increase in anaerobic respiration followed by higher weight
0.4 loss in the fruit (Weichmann, 1987). However, the fruit treated with
0.2 ethanol showed reduction in weight loss similar to the control fruit
which could be attributed to the volatile nature of the ethanol as
0.0
it evaporates from the surface and had no effect in the retention of
the quality of fruit (Mlikota Gabler et al., 2005). An increase in soft-
Total antioxidants (Activity of FeSO4 mg g fresh wt. of fruit)

2.5 ening of fruit at higher concentrations of EEP might be due to the

cohesion between EEP and fruit which decreased at higher concen-
c tration as ethanol evaporated off leaving hydrophobic propolis and
2.0 water, which separated and left an open matrix, for higher respira-
tion, thus it could not change the internal atmosphere of the fruit.
-1

The lower SSC levels in EEP-treated fruit could be due to the for-
1.5
mation a semi-permeable film around the fruit which suppressed
ethylene production and restored SSC content in the fruit (Kittur
1.0 et al., 2001). The decrease in TA values at higher concentrations
might be due to the elevation in ethylene production during stor-
age. In general, TA decreases with an increase in respiration rate
0.5
and therefore, a reduction in acidity level enhances the ripening of
fruit (El-Anany et al., 2009). The patterns of CO2 and ethylene pro-
0.0 duction could be due to the growth of fungus on the fruit skin. An
0 4 8 12 16 20 increase in respiration rate due to disease has also been reported
Storage time (Days) earlier in strawberries (El Ghaouth et al., 1991).
The decrease in total phenolic compounds in control fruit and
Fig. 2. Effect of different concentrations of EEP on (a) total phenolic compounds (b) the fruit treated with higher concentrations of EEP could be due
total flavonoids and (c) total antioxidant activity of dragon fruit during 20 days of
storage at 20 ± 2 ◦ C and 80 ± 5% RH. Values are the mean ± SE.
to the higher rate of respiration, which resulted in the degradation
of certain phenolic compounds (El Ghaouth et al., 1991), while the
retention of total flavonoids in 0.50% EEP-treated fruit could be due
to the slower respiration rates as compared to the fruit treated with
higher concentrations. The results of the present study are comple-
mentary with the earlier findings of Ghasemnezhad et al. (2010) in

Table 1
Effect of different concentrations of ethanolic extract of propolis (EEP) on decay percentage (%) of dragon fruit during storage.

Treatments Storage time (days)a

0 4 8 12 16 20

Control 0.00 g 0.00 g 25.0 d 47.60 c 79.86 b 100.0 a

0.25% EEP 0.00 g 0.00 g 0.00 g 12.78 f 21.46 e 29.56 d
0.50% EEP 0.00 g 0.00 g 0.00 g 0.00 g 0.00 g 1.54 g
0.75% EEP 0.00 g 0.00 g 7.63 f 39.56 d 58.67 c 89.72 a
1.0% EEP 0.00 g 0.00 g 10.85 f 45.78 c 74.98 b 97.87 a
a
Different alphabetical letters indicate statistically significant difference at (P ≤ 0.05), during storage (20 ± 2 ◦ C, 80 ± 5% RH). (LSD = 0.947).
72 N. Zahid et al. / Postharvest Biology and Technology 79 (2013) 69–72
which they reported that the decrease in total antioxidant activity
of apricots was due to heat production in the fruit and breakdown
of cell structure during storage.
The appearance of yellow and black coloured spots on
fruit bracts might be due to the cytotoxic activity of 2’,4’-
dihydroxychalcone, which is the major chemical compound of
propolis (Nieva Moreno et al., 2005). The higher concentrations of
EEP might have negatively affected the mitotic cell division which
resulted in the breakage of cell structure.
In conclusion, the present study indicates that 0.50% EEP not
only slowed down the ripening process but also increased the
biosynthesis of nutritional components such as total flavonoids and
total antioxidants. Higher concentrations of EEP (0.75 and 1.0%)
showed some phytotoxic effects on the fruit surface which could
be detrimental to the quality.
Acknowledgement
The authors are thankful to the Ministry of Agriculture (MOA),
Malaysia for financing this study under the project grant No. 05-
02-12-SF1003.
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