ISHS Acta Horticulturae 682: V International Postharvest Symposium
A CUSTOMIZED CITRUS CDNA MICROARRAY AND ITS USE IN POSTHARVEST |
| Authors: | C. Pons, C. Royo, J. Forment, J. Gadea, Y. Lluch, A. Granell, L. Zacarias, M.T. Lafuente, A.K. Kanellis |
| Keywords: | Citrus reticulata, Citrus clementina, gene expression, cold storage |
| Abstract:
The molecular mechanisms underlying the way fruit responds to the environment are not well understood, and this is especially true for those responses affecting fruit quality during storage. The development of high throughput molecular technologies such as transcriptomics can be very useful in defining the processes which affect fruit quality during postharvest. We are applying microarray technology to Citrus cultivars such as ‘Fortune’ mandarin which develops peel alterations during extended cold storage with the idea the results can contribute to design better managing and storage procedures. Although there are ongoing genomic programs in Citrus aimed at cloning and identifying all Citrus ESTs, this set of data and information is not yet available. Furthermore, large scale ESTs projects use random selection of ESTs from a range of different libraries which obviously cannot include plant material under all possible conditions; thus, the coverage of the array can not be complete and this may be particularly relevant when the number of ESTs is not large enough, as in the case of Citrus. In order to cover this gap we have constructed a cDNA microarray from ‘Fortune’ mandarin fruits. The array includes random cDNAs, high/low oxygen response genes, but is enriched with cDNAs from a subtracted library that contains cold induced genes. Bioinformatics analyses of the results obtained with this array revealed the presence of new genes associated to the response of ‘Fortune’ fruit to low temperatures. Some of these genes, identified as cold responsive genes, are tissue specific and are being classified by their pattern of expression and nature of the predicted gene product. The use of the array to study response of fruits exposed to different temperatures and time of storage will help to get a more defined picture of the postharvest conditions affecting Citrus fruit quality. | |
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