Fruit growth and development in apple: a molecular, genomics and epigenetics perspective

Abstract

Fruit growth and development are physiological processes controlled by several internal and external factors. This complex regulatory mechanism comprises a series of events occurring in a chronological order over a growing season. Understanding the underlying mechanism of fruit development events, however, requires consideration of the events occurring prior to fruit development such as flowering, pollination, fertilization, and fruit set. Such events are interrelated and occur in a sequential order. Recent advances in high-throughput sequencing technology in conjunction with improved statistical and computational methods have empowered science to identify some of the major molecular components and mechanisms involved in the regulation of fruit growth and have supplied encouraging successes in associating genotypic differentiation with phenotypic observations. As a result, multiple approaches have been developed to dissect such complex regulatory machinery and understand the genetic basis controlling these processes. These methods include transcriptomic analysis, quantitative trait loci (QTLs) mapping, whole-genome approach, and epigenetics analyses. This review offers a comprehensive overview of the molecular, genomic and epigenetics perspective of apple fruit growth and development that defines the final fruit size and provides a detailed analysis of the mechanisms by which fruit growth and development are controlled. Though the main emphasis of this article is on the molecular, genomic and epigenetics aspects of fruit growth and development, we will also deliver a brief overview on events occurring prior to fruit growth.

Transcriptomics reveal useful resources for examining fruit development and variation in fruit size in Coccinia grandis

“…Cucurbitaceae is the second largest family bearing diverse groups of plant with broad range of fruit characteristic (Shaina and Suhara Beevy, 2012;Ma et al, 2020). Studies related to fruit development and variations in fruit sizes are also reported in other plants like Arabidopsis, tomato, pear, pumpkin, cucumber, bottle gourd, apple, Apricot, sweet cherry among many others (Jiang et al, 2015;Xanthopoulou et al, 2017;Di Marzo et al, 2020;Yuste-Lisbona et al, 2020;Zhang et al, 2020;Kuhn et al, 2021;Liu et al, 2023;Wang et al, 2022;Jahed and Hirst, 2023). RNA-Seq analyses have become the most popular method to identify the key genes regulating fruit morphology in several cucurbit vegetables (Zhang et al, 2016;Ma et al, 2020;Chen et al, 2021).…”

“…Many external and internal factors influence fruit size including genetics, environment, cultivation practices etc. and have been studied in various reports ( Huang et al., 2023 ; Jahed and Hirst, 2023 ). Apart from these, molecular mechanisms such as cell division, cell expansion, and endoreduplication, play a vital role in determining fruit size and shape ( Chevalier et al., 2014 ; Okello et al., 2015 ; Mauxion et al., 2021 ).…”

“…In addition to that, microtubule play an active role in cell division and hence play a role in fruit size determination ( Hussain et al., 2020 ). With the progress in high-throughput sequencing techniques with computational, statistical methods and development of multi-omics, comparative transcriptomics has become a norm for identification of key genes underlying important biological phenomena such as control of fruit growth and size ( Peng et al., 2022 ; Jahed and Hirst, 2023 ). Transcriptomic analysis can reveal genes regulating important agronomic traits in plants and can also reveal differences in gene expression in response to environmental factors ( Zhang et al., 2020 ).…”