## 1 Introduction  
Melon, particularly _Cucumis melo_ var. reticulatus, is highly appreciated for its aroma and nutritional value, being a source of carotenoids, polyphenols, and ascorbic acid; however, the amount of these compounds is lost quickly during post-harvest storage [1], as well as after minimal processing operations. The cutting inevitably increases respiration and water losses, leading to wilting and softening of fruit tissues, thus limiting the shelf-life. The decrease in carotenoids may be triggered by their degradation since the wounding provokes oxygen exposure and consequently cellular disruption, which promotes the contact between these compounds and lipoxygenase [1, 2, 3]. Ascorbic acid (AA) and polyphenol losses could be attributed to cellular surface damages, which afterwards promote greater interaction between them and oxidative enzymes (i.e., peroxidase and polyphenol oxidase) [4, 5]. Particularly, an increase in the amount of the polyphenols after cutting was observed by different authors in many fruit and vegetables, including lettuce [6], lemon [7], carrot [8], potato [9] and melon [10], as a consequence of a defense mechanism caused by the wounding and other stresses. Moreover, the initial increase in phenolic compounds is normally followed by their decrease because of their interaction with oxidative enzymes promoted by the oxygen presence [11]. Several technologies have been developed and can be applied to maintain the quality of fresh-cut fruit and vegetables during storage, such as modified atmosphere, cold plasma treatments, ultraviolet radiations, pressurized gases and the employment of edible coatings [12; 13; 14; 15]. In particular, edible coatings have a high potential to carry active ingredients such as anti-brounning agents, colorants, flavors, nutrients, spices, etc., able to extend product shelf-life, reducing the risk of pathogen growth and improving the general quality of products also from a nutritional point of view [16; 17; 18]. As known by literature [19], the coating of fresh-cut products can be obtained by using different techniques such as dipping, brushing, fluidized-bed coating, electrostatic coating, vacuum impregnation, spraying, electrospraying, panning, etc. All these techniques exhibit several advantages and disadvantages, (e.g., the vacuum impregnation technique gives rise to a more thick coating, in comparison to dipping, but harms the quality of fruit in terms of texture and color; spraying methods are suitable for multilayer coating applications because they create very thin coatings, but are not recommended for high viscous liquids; fluidized bed coating and panning produce uniform coatings, but are expensive and need a high amount of coating solutions) and the selection of an appropriate method depends on the characteristics of food product to be covered as well as its surface features, and on the managing cost [14; 20; 21]. However, the most widely and commonly used methods to cover fresh-cut fruit are dipping and spraying due to their low costs and user-friendliness [11; 14; 20; 21; 22; 23]. Unfortunately, only a few studies have compared the performances of these two different coating methods applied to the same food product. [PERSON] et al. [22] evaluated the effects of chitosan-, sodium alginate- and soy protein-based coatings, applied by both dipping and spraying on texture, color and mass losses of a mozzarella cheese. Moreover, despite some works concerned with the use of enriched coatings realized with ascorbic acid and other ingredients on some intact and fresh-cut fruits, there is limited research focused on the application of enriched coatings on fresh-cut melon [18; 24; 25; 26; 27; 28]. Therefore, to the best of our knowledge, there are no studies concerning the influence of different coating application methods on the microstructural and nutritional properties of fresh-cut melon.