The button mushrooms (Agaricus bisporus) are among the favorite edible mushrooms because of their unique flavor and rich nutrients. They are one of the significant economic commodities, making up 30% of total mushroom production worldwide (Chaudhari, Das, Singh, & Dubey, 2023). However, button mushrooms are perishable during postharvest storage, undergoing discoloration, dehydration, texture changes, microbial spoilage, enzymatic activity changes, and nutrient flavor loss (Fattahifar, Barzegar, Gavlighi, & Sahari, 2018). Typically, they could be stored for only 3–4 d at room temperature (Arjun, Chakraborty, Mahanti, & Kotwaliwale, 2022). During postharvest storage, up to 40% of production might be lost without applying stored treatments (Wu et al., 2021).

To date, different treatments have been used to extend the shelf-life of mushrooms, such as antioxidants (Xia et al., 2021), ozone (Wang et al., 2021), negative air ions (Zhang et al., 2022), and edible coatings (Chaudhari et al., 2023). Among them, modified atmosphere packaging (MAP) is an effective approach for storing fresh produce and is frequently used to extend the shelf-life of mushrooms (Lin & Sun, 2019). Studies suggest that reducing O2 and increasing CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere can lower mushrooms' metabolism and prevent their decay (Gholami, Ahmadi, & Farris, 2017; Kwon, An, & Lee, 2014). However, MAP is limited in preserving mushrooms from deterioration. When mushroom respiration exceeds the stipulated rates or the products are exposed to high temperatures, it could result in their quality decay (Salamat et al., 2020). Particularly, CO2 concentration in MAP increased with the storage time due to the combined effect of respiration and permeation (Öztürk & Ayhan, 2023). It should be noted that high CO2 concentration can cause anaerobic respiration of button mushrooms, leading to browning (Pei et al., 2022). Besides, the potential excessive humidity inside MAP might cause rapid microbial growth and spoilage (Salamat et al., 2020). Hence, a more effective approach should be adopted to maintain the post-harvest quality of mushrooms, which goes beyond the direct MAP treatment (Zhang, Han, Xie, Wang, & Cao, 2022).

Among the emerging preservation technologies, electrostatic fields stand out because of their high efficiency in preventing food quality decay and securing food safety (Kao, Tu, Sridhar, & Tsai, 2019). According to the output voltage, it is categorized as high voltage electrostatic fields (HVEF) (>2.5 kV) and low voltage electrostatic fields (LVEF) (≤2.5 kV) (Hu et al., 2021). Previous studies on electrostatic fields have primarily focused on the use of HVEF for thawing and drying food products (He, Jia, Tatsumi, & Liu, 2016; Martynenko, Astatkie, Riaud, Wells, & Kudra, 2017) and prolonging the shelf-life of fresh produce (Hsieh et al., 2020; Huang, Yang, Sridhar, & Tsai, 2021; Kao et al., 2019; Zhang, Zhang, Law, & Guo, 2022). However, applying high voltages generates a substantial amount of air movement, known as ionic or electro-wind, leading to excessive moisture loss of fresh fruit and vegetables (Dalvi-Isfahan, Havet, Hamdami, & Le-Bail, 2023). Additionally, maintaining high voltages (e.g., 50 kV or even 100 kV) is a safety concern and costly (Hu et al., 2021; Wang, Li, Sun, & Zhu, 2019). To address the above challenge, researchers have made efforts to employ LVEF in the preservation application. Our previous research showed that LVEF could substantially retard postharvest senescence, reduce reactive oxygen species (ROS) metabolism response levels, induce antioxidant-related enzyme activity, maintain antioxidants, and improve the structural completeness of cell membranes (Xu et al., 2022). However, LVEF treatment alone might can't solve the water loss of fresh produce. To overcome this issue, we aimed to investigate a novel hurdle technology by combining the LVEF and MAP treatment. We evaluated the synergistic effects of LVEF+MAP on prolonging the shelf-life of mushrooms and elucidated the potential preservation mechanism provided by LVEF+MAP.