| Summary: | Latent infections caused by <i>Monilinia</i> spp. in nectarines cause great economic losses since they are not detected and rejected at harvest and can appear at any time post-harvest, even at the consumer’s home. The effect of a pre-cooling chamber, water dump operation, and cold-storage chamber on the activation and/or development of preharvest latent infections caused by <i>Monilinia</i> spp. on nectarines were studied under different postharvest conditions: (a) cold storage for 0, 1, or 3 d at 4 °C at either 75% relative humidity (RH) or 100% RH before water dumping, (b) water dumping for 10 minutes at 15 °C, and (c) cold storage for 0, 3, or 10 d at 4 °C at either 75% RH or 100% RH after water dumping. These storage conditions were transformed to fungal physiological time. For visualization of the latent infections caused by <i>Monilinia</i> spp., the nectarines were placed in sterile paper bags and frozen at −20 °C for 48 h in order to damage the epidermis. To compare different handling scenarios, the incidence of latent infection was modelled for physiological time description by a modified Gompertz model. The activation and/or development of preharvest natural latent infections caused by <i>Monilinia</i> spp. at postharvest was mainly related to temperature and incubation time at postharvest. Storing nectarines with any postharvest handling less than 11 days at 4 °C avoids brown rot symptoms and reduced the activation and/or development of pre-harvest latent infections caused by <i>Monilinia</i> spp., while more cold days caused the exponential phase of latent infection activation and/or development. The Gompertz model employed could be used for predicting the activation and/or development of latent infection caused by <i>Monilinia</i> spp. at postharvest conditions and looks at the postharvest life. To our knowledge, this is the first time that the effects of post-harvest handling on latent infections in fruit have been studied.
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