Articles
Candidate biomarkers for endodormancy release in Prunus species
Article number
1412_56
Pages
377 – 382
Language
English
Abstract
Endodormancy in Prunus spp. is one of the most crucial stages of the dormancy cycle in mild-winter areas like Spain.
In this phase, growth stops and metabolism slows down.
In order to surpass endodormancy and ecodormancy to resume growth, a certain amount of chill must be accumulated.
In the last decades, the high winter temperatures resulting from global warming hinder the chill accumulation, endangering both suitable flowering and fruit set.
Because of this fact, a great number of biostimulants have been applied with the aim of palliating the low amount of accumulated chill.
However, most popular biostimulants are not as effective as they should be to compensate the effects of global warming.
In this research, we studied the candidate targets for modulating endodormancy release in peach and apricot by spraying with the two most-used biostimulants named Erger® + Activ Erger® or Broston® + NitroActive®. Flower buds from both, treated groups and a non-treated group (control), were weekly assayed for a non-target metabolomic analysis by UPLC-QToF. Metabolites from the flavonoid metabolism, phenylpropanoid and abscisic acid biosynthesis showed significant variations during endodormancy release (the step between endodormancy and bud break) in many of the studied groups.
With the aim of getting more knowledge about the biosynthetic process of these metabolites, the expression of several genes responsible of their biosynthesis and catabolization was analyzed.
The results from the gene expression analysis showed that genes like ABA2, responsible of ABA biosynthesis or CYP707A, responsible of its catabolism suffered significant variations during the endodormancy release process in both treated and non-treated trees.
The up and downregulations observed in the flavonoid, phenylpropanoid and ABA biosynthetic pathway pointed out the capability of these pathways as candidate biomarkers of the endodormancy release process in Prunus. We believe that our study has the potential to be a pivotal breakthrough in the research of endodormancy for these species.
In this phase, growth stops and metabolism slows down.
In order to surpass endodormancy and ecodormancy to resume growth, a certain amount of chill must be accumulated.
In the last decades, the high winter temperatures resulting from global warming hinder the chill accumulation, endangering both suitable flowering and fruit set.
Because of this fact, a great number of biostimulants have been applied with the aim of palliating the low amount of accumulated chill.
However, most popular biostimulants are not as effective as they should be to compensate the effects of global warming.
In this research, we studied the candidate targets for modulating endodormancy release in peach and apricot by spraying with the two most-used biostimulants named Erger® + Activ Erger® or Broston® + NitroActive®. Flower buds from both, treated groups and a non-treated group (control), were weekly assayed for a non-target metabolomic analysis by UPLC-QToF. Metabolites from the flavonoid metabolism, phenylpropanoid and abscisic acid biosynthesis showed significant variations during endodormancy release (the step between endodormancy and bud break) in many of the studied groups.
With the aim of getting more knowledge about the biosynthetic process of these metabolites, the expression of several genes responsible of their biosynthesis and catabolization was analyzed.
The results from the gene expression analysis showed that genes like ABA2, responsible of ABA biosynthesis or CYP707A, responsible of its catabolism suffered significant variations during the endodormancy release process in both treated and non-treated trees.
The up and downregulations observed in the flavonoid, phenylpropanoid and ABA biosynthetic pathway pointed out the capability of these pathways as candidate biomarkers of the endodormancy release process in Prunus. We believe that our study has the potential to be a pivotal breakthrough in the research of endodormancy for these species.
Authors
J. Guillamón Guillamón, F. Dicenta, D. Ruiz, J. López-Alcolea, R. Sánchez-Pérez
Keywords
Prunus, dormancy release, biomarker, ABA metabolism
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