Figure 1.

Environmental conditions prevailing during pre- and post-harvest of leafy vegetables and affecting the fate of phyllosphere organisms. (A) Change of the plant matrix from pre- to post-harvest and related alterations in the physio-chemical phyllosphere environment. (B) Temperature as an example of fluctuations in the phyllosphere environment during pre-harvest (I: field environment; II canopy surface) and post-harvest (III: household refrigerator). I: Diurnal changes in atmospheric temperature (solid line) and crop stand temperature near the soil surface (broken line) monitored in southern Sweden during 3 weeks in May and June 2014 in a baby leaf spinach crop. Atmospheric temperature was recorded once per hour and crop stand temperature every 30 min. The purple box indicates the time window for assessment of leaf temperature displayed in II. II: Leaf surface temperature of field-grown baby leaf spinach. The image was taken with an infrared camera. The red and blue triangles indicate the sites with the highest and lowest temperatures in the section. III: Temperature fluctuations in a household refrigerator where temperature was recorded every 5 min during a 14-day period. (Pictures and original data in the figures have previously not been published. Photo by Beatrix Alsanius).