Blue light irradiation affects anthocyanin content and enzyme activities involved in postharvest strawberry fruit.

Blue light irradiation was applied to postharvest strawberry fruit to explore its influence on anthocyanin content and anthocyanin biosynthetic enzyme activities. Strawberry fruit was irradiated with blue light at 40 μmol m(-2) s(-1) for 12 days at 5 °C. The results indicated that blue light treatment improved total anthocyanin content in strawberry fruit during storage. Meanwhile, the treatment increased the activities of glucose-6-phosphate, shikimate dehydrogenase, tyrosine ammonia-lyase, phenylalanine ammonia-lyase, cinnamate-4-hydroxylase, 4-coumarate/coenzyme A ligase, dihydroflavonol-4-reductase, chalcone synthase, flavanone-3-β-hydroxylase, anthocyanin synthase, and UDP-glycose flavonoid-3-O-glycosyltranferase, which suggested that the enhancement of anthocyanin concentration by blue light might result from the activation of its related enzymes. Blue light might be proposed as a supplemental light source in the storage of strawberry fruit to improve its anthocyanin content.