Biomass composition explains fruit relative growth rate and discriminates climacteric from non-climacteric species

Abstract

To understand the mechanisms that link metabolism to phenotypes, which would help to target breeding strategies, eight fleshy fruit species were compared during development and ripening. Three herbaceous (eggplant, pepper, cucumber), three tree (apple, peach, clementine) and two vine (kiwifruit, grape) species were selected for their diversity. Fruit fresh weight and biomass composition including the major soluble and insoluble components were determined throughout fruit development and ripening. Best fitting models of fruit weight were used to estimate relative growth rate (RGR), which was significantly correlated with several biomass components, especially protein content (R=84) stearate (R=0.72), palmitate (R=0.72) and lignocerate (R=0.68). Moreover, the strong link between biomass composition and RGR was further evidenced by generalised linear models that predicted RGR with R-values exceeding 0.9. Fruit comparison also showed that climacteric fruit (apple, peach, kiwifruit) contained more non-cellulosic cell-wall-glucose and -fucose and starch than non-climacteric fruit. The rate of starch net accumulation was also higher in climacteric fruit. These results suggest that the way biomass is constructed has a major influence on performance, especially growth rate.

Metabolite Fruit Profile Is Altered in Response to Source–Sink Imbalance and Can Be Used as an Early Predictor of Fruit Quality in Nectarine

“…This trend was exacerbated at the ripening stage in agreement with phenotypic analysis, where TSS of TH were higher than UTH fruits in the first season evaluated ( Table 1 ). This pattern of sugar accumulation throughout fruit development in “Magique” is quite similar to that observed in other peach and nectarine varieties ( Moing et al, 1998 ; Lombardo et al, 2011 ; Zhang et al, 2013 ; Bae et al, 2014 ; Desnoues et al, 2014 ; Roch et al, 2020 ). Nuñez et al (2019) reported that this steep increase of sucrose at the end of development was in parallel to an increase in the sucrose transporter gene PpeSUT1 expression mainly in thinned trees probably supporting apoplasmic sucrose unloading at harvest.…”

The exposome paradigm to predict environmental health in terms of systemic homeostasis and resource balance based on NMR data science

“…[266][267][268] NMR can help in targeting of breeding strategies; for instance, NMR has been used to compare eight eshy fruit species during development and ripening in order to understand the mechanisms that link metabolism to phenotype. 269 NMR-based metabolomics has been applied to the study of other foodstuffs, including truffle, kiwifruit, lettuce and sea bass. 270 In combination with multivariate analysis, NMR-based metabolomics can be used to characterize differences based on geographical origin and plant varieties.…”

Starch branching enzymes as putative determinants of postharvest quality in horticultural crops

“…Starch is transiently synthesized and stored in unripe fruits with a peak just before ripening [ 155 ]. Starch appears to be a critical feature of climacteric fruit metabolism, known for their bursts of respiratory activity and ethylene production upon ripening [ 27 , 156 ]. Climacteric fruits contain more starch, and, more active starch biosynthesis than non-climacteric fruit after anthesis [ 27 , 156 ].…”

“…Starch appears to be a critical feature of climacteric fruit metabolism, known for their bursts of respiratory activity and ethylene production upon ripening [ 27 , 156 ]. Climacteric fruits contain more starch, and, more active starch biosynthesis than non-climacteric fruit after anthesis [ 27 , 156 ]. In tomato, the functional genomics model for fleshy climacteric fruit, starch fulfilled 40% of the carbon needed for respiratory processes based on a constraint-based flux model [ 157 ].…”

“…It describes starch that is accumulated and degraded during development in the storage organ [ 24 , 25 ]. Transitory-storage starch is a feature of many species including horticultural crops of economic value such as tomato, banana, kiwi, strawberry, nectarine, and apple fruit [ 26 , 27 ].…”