Abstract: Freshly harvested strawberries (Fragaria ananassa Duch. cv. Fengxiang) were used to explore the preservation effect of 5 essential oils including carvacrol, cinnamaldehyde, perillaldehyde, linalool and allyl isothiocyanate at various concentrations (0.5, 1, 5,10μL/L) during storage at 20 or 5 ℃. The results showed that all of the 5 essential oils could significantly inhibit the incidence of fruit decay at both 5 ℃ and 20 ℃ of which, allyl isothiocyanate revealed the most obvious inhibitory effect. However, high concentrations of essential oil such as allyl isothiocyanate and perillaldehyde at 5μL/L and the other three essential oils at 10μL/L could result in chemical injury of strawberry fruits. Treatments with each essential oils at appropriate concentrations significantly inhibited the increase of weight loss and the decrease of firmness, retained higher levels of titratable acidity, total soluble solids, vitamin C, total sugar and reducing sugar, thereby maintaining better fruit quality. These results suggested that essential oil treatment might be a promising method to control fruit decay and maintain high quality for postharvest strawberries.

Key words: essential oil, strawberry fruit, decay, quality