Inheritance of Fruit Red-Flesh Patterns in Peach

Abstract

Fruit color is an important trait in peach from the point of view of consumer preference, nutritional content, and diversification of fruit typologies. Several genes and phenotypes have been described for peach flesh and skin color, and although peach color knowledge has increased in the last few years, some fruit color patterns observed in peach breeding programs have not been carefully described. In this work, we first describe some peach mesocarp color patterns that have not yet been described in a collection of commercial peach cultivars, and we also study the genetic inheritance of the red dots present in the flesh (RDF) and red color around the stone (CAS) in several intra- and interspecific segregating populations for both traits. For RDF, we identified a QTL at the beginning of G5 in two intraspecific populations, and for CAS we identified a major QTL in G4 in both an intraspecific and an interspecific population between almond and peach. Finally, we discuss the interaction between these QTLs and some other genes previously identified in peach, such as dominant blood flesh (DBF), color around the stone (Cs), subacid (D) and the maturity date (MD), and the implications for peach breeding. The results obtained here will help peach germplasm curators and breeders to better characterize their plant materials and to develop an integrated system of molecular markers to select these traits.

Marker-Assisted Selection in Breeding for Fruit Trait Improvement: A Review

“…The trait has been mapped as a major QTL called qRDF5 at the beginning of LG5 in a region between 0.6 and 1.4 Mb of the Prunus reference genome v2.0. As stated above, within the concerned region, the DBF gene was identified, so a possible explanation speculated by the authors [99] is that qRDF5 is produced by an alternative allele of the DBF gene.…”

“…A deletion occurring in the promoter region of the gene PpMYB10.1 was found to be associated with the trait [98]. More recently, Zaracho et al [99] focused their attention on the study of this trait identifying a major QTL explaining 24,4% of the phenotypic variance in LG4 in both intraspecific and interspecific populations between almond and peach. Two SNP markers flank the QTL (SNP_IGA_409167 and SNP_IGA_419762), which corresponds to the physical position between 10,363,642 and 13,675,935 bp in Prunus reference genome v2.0.…”