MONITORING DIFFERENTIAL EXPRESSION DURING FRUIT MATURATION, RIPENING AND STORAGE AS AN IDENTIFICATION TOOL FOR GENE CANDIDATES FOR SUPERIOR APPLE FRUIT QUALITY

Abstract

A large-scale transcriptional study by means of the cDNA-AFLP technique was performed on skin and flesh tissue of the apple cultivar 'Delbard Jubile' in an attempt to screen for differential gene expression related to fruit maturation and ripening. As such around 600 gene fragments could be visualized of which the expression fluctuated significantly in time. The corresponding profiles were clustered to determine groups of similar expression behavior and related to the expression of ACC-oxidase and polygalacturonase. A selection of profiles was made for isolation and sequencing of the underlying cDNA-fragment. Our results clearly demonstrate that by our approach we visualized genes linked to maturation and ripening as we detected some interesting gene fragment homologies for further characterization. In a second part we tried to describe texture deterioration by following ACC-oxidase and polygalacturonase gene expression during cold storage of 5 cultivars and advanced breeding selections.[...]