Open Access

ARTICLE

Comparative Transcriptomic Analysis of Two Tomato Cultivars with Different Shelf-Life Traits

Abdul Karim Amin¹, Yan He¹, Xianglong Wang¹, Pengwei Li¹, Muhammad Ahmad Hassan², Mohammad Yousof Soltani³, Yiling Zhang¹, Mohammad Alem Amin⁴, Ahmad Shah Ahmadzai⁵, Yajing Liu^1,3,*, Songhu Wang^1,3,*

1 Anhui Province Key Laboratory of Horticultural Crop Quality Biology, School of Horticulture, Anhui Agricultural University, Hefei, 230036, China
2 Anhui Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Hefei, 230001, China
3 Anhui Province Key Laboratory of Soybean Molecular Breeding and Crop Quality Biology, School of Agronomy, Anhui Agricultural University, Hefei, 230036, China
4 Department of Horticulture, Ghazni University, Ghazni, 2301, Afghanistan
5 State Key Laboratory of Crop Genetics and Germplasm Enhancement, College of Horticulture, Nanjing Agricultural University, Nanjing, 210095, China

* Corresponding Authors: Yajing Liu. Email: ; Songhu Wang. Email:

(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Plant Secondary Metabolism and Functional Biology)

Phyton-International Journal of Experimental Botany 2024, 93(8), 2075-2093. https://doi.org/10.32604/phyton.2024.054641

Received 03 June 2024; Accepted 26 July 2024; Issue published 30 August 2024

Abstract

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) is a perishable fruit because of its fast water loss and susceptibility to pathogens in the post-harvest stage, which leads to huge economic losses every year. In this study, firstly from 19 tomato cultivars, we screened out two cultivars, Riogrand and SalarF1, having long and short shelf-life spans, respectively. Secondly, shelf-life analysis was carried out for both cultivars at room temperature. Results exhibited that Riogrand showed higher firmness and less weight loss than SalarF1. The ethylene production was higher in SalarF1, compared with Riogrand during post-harvest storages. We performed transcriptomic analysis of both cultivars in different storage stages. We discovered 2913, 2188, and 11,119 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) for three post-harvest stages (0, 20, and 40 Days Post-Harvest (DPH)), respectively. These genes are enriched in ethylene biosynthesis and response, as well as cell wall-related genes. Ethylene response factor (ERF) ERF2 and ERF4 were highly expressed in SalarF1 with a short shelf life in 40 DPH, and the ethylene biosynthetic genes ACO1, ACO4, ACS6, and ACS2 were significantly upregulated in SalarF1. Regarding cell wall loosening and cell wall-related genes XTH3, XTH7, XTH23, 1,3;1,4-β-D-Gluc-like, pGlcT1, Cellulase, PGH1, PL5, PL-like 1, PL-like 2 exhibited the highest levels of significance, being notably upregulated in the last stage of SalarF1. The quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (qRT-PCR) analysis validated these gene expressions, which is in line with the transcriptome analysis. The findings suggested that the extension of tomato fruit shelf life is mostly dependent on ethylene biosynthesis, signaling pathway genes, cell wall loosening, and cell wall-associated genes.

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Keywords

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Supplementary Material

Supplementary Material File

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