Abstract
Japanese plum fruits are rich in phenolic compounds, such as anthocyanins and flavan-3-ols, whose contents vary significantly among cultivars. Catechin (C) and epicatechin (EC) are flavan-3-ol monomers described in the fruits of this species and are associated with bitterness, astringency, antioxidant capacity, and susceptibility to enzymatic mesocarp browning. In this study, we aimed to identify quantitative trait loci (QTL) associated with the content of flavan-3-ol in Japanese plum fruits. We evaluated the content of C and EC in the mesocarp and exocarp of samples from 79 and 64 seedlings of an F1 progeny (<‘98–99’ × ‘Angeleno’>) in the first and second seasons, respectively. We also constructed improved versions of linkage maps from ‘98–99’ and ‘Angeleno,’ presently called single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) after mapping the already available GBS reads to Prunus salicina Lindl. cv. ‘Sanyueli’ v2.0 reference genome. These data allowed for describing a cluster of QTLs in the cultivar, ‘Angeleno,’ associated with the flavan-3-ol composition of mesocarp and exocarp, which explain up to 100% of the C/EC ratio. Additionally, we developed a C/EC metabolic marker, which was mapped between the markers with the highest log of odds (LOD) scores detected by the QTL analysis. The C/EC locus was located in the LG1, at an interval spanning 0.70 cM at 108.30–108.90 cM. Our results suggest the presence of a novel major gene controlling the preferential synthesis of C or EC in the Japanese plum fruits. This study is a significant advance in understanding the regulation of synthesizing compounds associated with fruit quality, postharvest, and human health promotion.
Highlights
The Prunus genus comprises species with a high economic interest in agriculture, including peach, apricot, cherry, and the Japanese plum, among others (Carrasco et al, 2013; Ogah et al, 2014)
S1_46553437, corresponding to those with the maximum log of odds (LOD) score for the trait, C/EC-binary. These results indicate that the locus, C/EC would be responsible for the content of C and EC in the tissues of the Japanese plum fruits since these compounds are the precursors of the other flavan-3-ols evaluated in this study
Japanese plum fruits are rich in phenolic compounds, such as phenolic acids, anthocyanins, flavonols, and flavan-3-ols families (Fanning et al, 2014)
Summary
The Prunus genus comprises species with a high economic interest in agriculture, including peach, apricot, cherry, and the Japanese plum, among others (Carrasco et al, 2013; Ogah et al, 2014). Phenolic compounds are proposed to play a protective role in the interaction of plants with biotic and abiotic environments (Arici et al, 2014). These are associated with human health benefits due to their antioxidant capacity, e.g., phenolic acids as neochlorogenic acid and flavonoids as anthocyanins and flavan-3-ols. It has been demonstrated that these compounds can affect pigmentation, astringency, and bitterness of plant tissues, even if they are present in low concentrations (Soares et al, 2013) Because of their diversity, flavonoids have been used as models for analyzing a wide variety of genetic, epigenetic, cellular, biochemical, and evolutionary processes (Xu et al, 2015; Li et al, 2019; Zhu et al, 2020)
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