The research team led by Wang zhiqiang who is a researcher at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Zhengzhou Institute on fruit tree,found that PpYUC11 plays an important role in regulating the flesh ofpeach. This research result has been published on the latest issue of The Journal of Experimental Botany.

Peach can be devided into three types according to the texture of peach. Now, the common cultivated variety is melting flesh which would rapidly soften after maturing. It not only greatly shortens the storage time but also increases the possibility of being infested by pathogenic microorganism and causes great economic losses. However, the fruit of hard peach is not easy to become soft after turning color and accumlating high concentrations of suger no matter being on the tree or harvesting. So study on molecular mechanism of formation of rigid meat quality traits of peaches and extracting the key genes which determine or regulate the formation of texture traits are conductive to cultivating new peach variety of transport tolerant.

Metling peach is a typical climacteric fruit which would be rapidly soften in the presence of ethylene.According to the former research, the transition of ethylene was regulated by IAA during melting peach ripening. However, during the ripening period of hard peaches, the synthesis of IAA would be hindered that  the ethylene couldn’t be releasednormally and the fruit would’t get soft.Wang’s team screened out the PpYUC11 which could control the synthetic rout of IAA through comparing the regulating gene expression patterns between two types of peach and analyzing the answer mode of different expressed genes. This research expands the understanding of peach ripening and softening molecular mechanism. At the same time, the research result has essential practical value.

Time:2015.9.14

Source: Chinese Academy ofAgricultural Sciences