[Soukoulis2013]
Soukoulis, C., L. Cappellin, E. Aprea, F. Costa, R. Viola, TD.. Märk, F. Gasperi, and F. Biasioli,
"PTR-ToF-MS, A Novel, Rapid, High Sensitivity and Non-Invasive Tool to Monitor Volatile Compound Release During Fruit Post-Harvest Storage: The Case Study of Apple Ripening",
Food and Bioprocess Technology, vol. 6, no. 10: Springer US, pp. 2831-2843, 2013.
Link:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11947-012-0930-6
In the present study, the potential of PTR-ToF-MS for addressing fundamental and technical post-harvest issues was tested on the non-destructive and rapid monitoring of volatile compound evolution in three apple cultivars (‘Golden Delicious’, ‘Braeburn’ and ‘Gold Rush’) during 25 days of post-harvest shelf life ripening. There were more than 800 peaks in the PTR-ToF-MS spectra of apple headspace and many of them were associated with relevant compounds. Besides the ion produced upon proton transfer, we used the ion at mass 28.031 (C2H 4 +) produced by charge transfer from residual O 2 + as a monitor for ethylene concentration. ‘Golden Delicious’ apples were characterised by higher ethylene emission rates than ‘Gold Rush’ and ‘Braeburn’, and quantitative comparison has been supported by two segment piecewise linear model fitting. Ester evolution during post-harvest ripening is strongly dependent on endogenous ethylene concentration levels. For ‘Golden Delicious’ and ‘Braeburn’, sesquiterpenes (alpha-farnesene) exhibited a fast response to ethylene emission followed by a rapid decline after the endogenous ethylene maximum peak. Carbonyl compounds displayed a different time evolution as compared to esters and terpenes and did not show any evident relationship with ethylene. Methanol and ethanol concentrations during the entire storage period did not change significantly. We show how multivariate analysis can efficiently handle the large datasets produced by PTR-ToF-MS and that the outcomes obtained are in agreement with the literature. The different volatile compounds could be simultaneously monitored with high time resolution, providing advantages over the more established techniques for the investigation of VOC dynamics in fruit post-harvest storage trials.
[Costa2013]
Costa, F., L. Cappellin, E. Zini, A. Patocchi, M. Kellerhals, M. Komjanc, C. Gessler, and F. Biasioli,
"QTL validation and stability for volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in apple.",
Plant Sci, vol. 211: n Edmund Mach, Via Mach 1, 38010 San Michele all'Adige (TN), Italy. Electronic address: fabrizio.costa@fmach.it., pp. 1–7, Oct, 2013.
Link:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.plantsci.2013.05.018
The aroma trait in apple is a key factor for fruit quality strongly affecting the consumer appreciation, and its detection and analysis is often an extremely laborious and time consuming procedure. Molecular markers associated to this trait can to date represent a valuable selection tool to overcome these limitations. QTL mapping is the first step in the process of targeting valuable molecular markers to be employed in marker-assisted breeding programmes (MAB). However, a validation step is usually required before a newly identified molecular marker can be implemented in marker-assisted selection. In this work the position of a set of QTLs associated to volatile organic compounds (VOCs) was confirmed and validated in three different environments in Switzerland, namely Wädenswil, Conthey and Cadenazzo, where the progeny 'Fiesta×Discovery' was replicated. For both QTL identification and validation, the phenotypic data were represented by VOCs produced by mature apple fruit and assessed with a Proton Transfer Reaction-Mass Spectrometer (PTR-MS) instrument. The QTL-VOC combined analysis performed among these three locations validated the presence of important QTLs in three specific genomic regions, two located in the linkage group 2 and one in linkage group 15, respectively, for compounds related to esters (m/z 43, 61 and 131) and to the hormone ethylene (m/z 28). The QTL set presented here confirmed that in apple some compounds are highly genetically regulated and stable across environments.