Journal
JOURNAL OF AGRICULTURAL AND FOOD CHEMISTRY
Volume 60, Issue 1, Pages 476-481Publisher
AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/jf203891e
Keywords
Citrus sinensis; blood orange; anthocyanin; cold storage; NAC transcription factor
Funding
- Ministero delle Politiche Agricole Alimentari e Forestali (MiPAAF)
Ask authors/readers for more resources
The health benefits associated with the consumption of anthocyanin-containing foods are extensively documented. Mature fruits of blood oranges and their hybrids are characterized by the presence of these bioactive pigments, the abundance of which can be enhanced by storing fruit at cooling nonfreezing temperature. In this work the effects of short low-temperature exposure (4 degrees C x 15 days) upon orange anthocyanin content and the expression of structural genes belonging to the pigment biosynthesis pathway were investigated. The results highlight that anthocyanin levels of fruit exposed to cold sharply increase, reaching, after 6 days of storage, a value 8 times higher than that observed in the time zero samples, thus suggesting that fruit with enhanced health-related attributes might be obtained at this storage stage. The analysis of gene expression shows that the amount of transcripts of all considered genes (CM1, PAL, CHS, DFR, ANS, UFGT, and GST) sharply increased after 3-6 days of cold storage, confirming previous data showing that the biosynthesis of anthocyanins is a cold-regulated pathway. By comparing the expression of selected genes (PAL, DFR, and UFGT) between blood and common oranges, it turns out that those genes strictly involved in anthocyanin biosynthesis are not cold responsive in common oranges. Moreover, the data highlight that the EST encoding the transcription factor NAC domain protein is selectively induced by cold in blood oranges but not in common oranges, thus proposing it as a candidate gene specifically involved in blood orange response to cold exposure.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available