Project description:‘Crumbly’ fruit is a developmental disorder in red raspberry (Rubus idaeus) that results in malformed fruit with poor adherence of drupelets to one another. In terms of quality and yield, crumbly fruit has become a serious problem in the raspberry industry resulting in unsaleable fruit and waste. A microarray experiment, using pools of progeny from a segregating mapping population (Glen Moy x Latham) with either 'normal' or 'crumbly' fruit at three different fruit developmental stages ('closed'; 'open'; 'green'), identified several genes that were differentially expressed between the crumbly and non-crumbly phenotypes within three quantitative trait loci (QTL) identified. Analysis of gene function highlighted the importance of processes that compromise ovule fertilization as triggers of the crumbly fruit phenotype.
Project description:Rubus chingii Hu, indigenous to China, is very rich in flavonoids. With the exception of anthocyanin, fruit flavonoids were much higher than most berries including other raspberry species, which partly contributed to its high phenolics and antioxidant capability. In contrast to other raspberries, anthocyanin and other flavonoids decreased as fruit matured. We investigated four typical phases of fruit maturation using transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics. The results indicate that the down-regulation of phenylpropanoid, flavonoid and anthocyanin biosynthesis are responsible for the metabolic decrease. The down-regulation of RcCHS (CL6140.Contig5) and RcCHI (Unigene14858 and Unigene22344) at gene and protein levels were associated with decreases of naringenin/naringenin chalcone respectively. Down-regulation of RcLAR (CL9527.Contig3) at gene and protein levels was consistent with decreases of afzelechin/epiafzelechin, catechin/epicatechin, and gallocatechin/epigallocatechin. However, multiple genes/proteins involved in the enzymatic pathways were divergent and differently regulated, e.g. Rc4CL genes/proteins were down-regulated while Rc4CL-like was maintained at constantly low levels.
