Search for Articles:
Title / Keyword
Author / Affiliation / Email
Journal
Article Type
 
 
Advanced Search
 
Section
Special Issue
Volume
Issue
Number
Page
 
5.4
4.5
Journals
Plants
Special Issues
Research Progress on the Application of Biotechnology in Fruit Crop...
share announcement

Research Progress on the Application of Biotechnology in Fruit Crop Breeding

A special issue of Plants (ISSN 2223-7747). This special issue belongs to the section "Plant Genetics, Genomics and Biotechnology".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 October 2021) | Viewed by 9132

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Bruno Mezzetti

grade E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences, Università Politecnica delle Marche, 60131 Ancona, Italy
Interests: berries breeding; biotechnological approaches for the genetic improvement; fruit tree crops; cisgenesis and RNAi disease resistance; fruit quality and nutritional profile
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Silvia Sabbadini

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Agricultural, Food and Environmental Sciences, Università Politecnica delle Marche, Ancona, Italy
Interests: techniques for creating genetic variability in perennial fruit crops; in vitro regeneration approaches (organogenesis and somatic embryogenesis) to be applied for mutagenesis and new genomic techniques; RNAi strategies (HIGS, SIGS); cisgenesis/intragenesis; gene editing
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Emergencies of climate changes and of new plant pests and diseases are requiring the development of new more resilient cultivars, maintaining high yield and quality. Standard breeding programs in perennial fruit crops are time consuming and frequently limited by a lack of genetic resources. Integrative biotechnology approaches are mandatory for inducing new genetic variability in elite cultivars to increase their resilience and quality. 

In vitro morphogenesis (somatic embryogenesis, organogenesis) remains a key tool to apply to biotechnological approaches, starting from in vitro mutagenesis to the more recent new breeding techniques (NBTs) (Cisgenesis/Intragenesis, Genome editing, RNAi). 

This Special Issue of Plants aims to address the problems inherent in the development of efficient morphogenesis protocols and their use for the application of biotechnological techniques (Cisgenesis/Intragenesis, Genome editing, RNAi) in fruit plants. Furthermore, we are also seeking papers that investigate the opportunities that these technologies can offer in enhancing their productive and qualitative traits and solving the increasing sanitary emergencies that are affecting these crops.

Prof. Dr. Bruno Mezzetti
Dr. Silvia Sabbadini
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Plants is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2700 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Fruit crops
  • In vitro morphogenesis
  • New breeding techniques
  • Yield and quality
  • Disease resistance

Published Papers (3 papers)

Download All Papers
Order results
Result details
Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:

Research

16 pages, 23358 KiB  
Article
Profiling of N6-Methyladenosine (m6A) Modification Landscape in Response to Drought Stress in Apple (Malus prunifolia (Willd.) Borkh)
by Xiushan Mao, Nan Hou, Zhenzhong Liu and Jieqiang He
Plants 2022, 11(1), 103; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants11010103 - 30 Dec 2021
Cited by 20 | Viewed by 2669
Abstract
Drought stress is a significant environmental factor limiting crop growth worldwide. Malus prunifolia is an important apple species endemic to China and is used for apple cultivars and rootstocks with great drought tolerance. N6-methyladenosine (m6A) is a common epigenetic [...] Read more.
Drought stress is a significant environmental factor limiting crop growth worldwide. Malus prunifolia is an important apple species endemic to China and is used for apple cultivars and rootstocks with great drought tolerance. N6-methyladenosine (m6A) is a common epigenetic modification on messenger RNAs (mRNAs) in eukaryotes which is critical for various biological processes. However, there are no reports on m6A methylation in apple response to drought stress. Here, we assessed the m6A landscape of M. prunifolia seedlings in response to drought and analyzed the association between m6A modification and transcript expression. In total, we found 19,783 and 19,609 significant m6A peaks in the control and drought treatment groups, respectively, and discovered a UGUAH (H: A/U/C) motif. In M. prunifolia, under both control and drought conditions, peaks were highly enriched in the 3′ untranslated region (UTR) and coding sequence (CDS). Among 4204 significant differential m6A peaks in drought-treated M. prunifolia compared to control-treated M. prunifolia, 4158 genes with m6A modification were identified. Interestingly, a large number of hypermethylated peaks (4069) were stimulated by drought treatment compared to hypomethylation. Among the hypermethylated peak-related genes, 972 and 1238 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) were up- and down-regulated in response to drought, respectively. Gene ontology (GO) analyses of differential m6A-modified genes revealed that GO slims related to RNA processing, epigenetic regulation, and stress tolerance were significantly enriched. The m6A modification landscape depicted in this study sheds light on the epigenetic regulation of M. prunifolia in response to drought stress and indicates new directions for the breeding of drought-tolerant apple trees. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Research Progress on the Application of Biotechnology in Fruit Crop Breeding)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

21 pages, 3907 KiB  
Article
The Intragenesis and Synthetic Biology Approach towards Accelerating Genetic Gains on Strawberry: Development of New Tools to Improve Fruit Quality and Resistance to Pathogens
by Victoria Súnico, José Javier Higuera, Francisco J. Molina-Hidalgo, Rosario Blanco-Portales, Enriqueta Moyano, Antonio Rodríguez-Franco, Juan Muñoz-Blanco and José L. Caballero
Plants 2022, 11(1), 57; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants11010057 - 25 Dec 2021
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3264
Abstract
Under climate change, the spread of pests and pathogens into new environments has a dramatic effect on crop protection control. Strawberry (Fragaria spp.) is one the most profitable crops of the Rosaceae family worldwide, but more than 50 different genera of pathogens [...] Read more.
Under climate change, the spread of pests and pathogens into new environments has a dramatic effect on crop protection control. Strawberry (Fragaria spp.) is one the most profitable crops of the Rosaceae family worldwide, but more than 50 different genera of pathogens affect this species. Therefore, accelerating the improvement of fruit quality and pathogen resistance in strawberry represents an important objective for breeding and reducing the usage of pesticides. New genome sequencing data and bioinformatics tools has provided important resources to expand the use of synthetic biology-assisted intragenesis strategies as a powerful tool to accelerate genetic gains in strawberry. In this paper, we took advantage of these innovative approaches to create four RNAi intragenic silencing cassettes by combining specific strawberry new promoters and pathogen defense-related candidate DNA sequences to increase strawberry fruit quality and resistance by silencing their corresponding endogenous genes, mainly during fruit ripening stages, thus avoiding any unwanted effect on plant growth and development. Using a fruit transient assay, GUS expression was detected by the two synthetic FvAAT2 and FvDOF2 promoters, both by histochemical assay and qPCR analysis of GUS transcript levels, thus ensuring the ability of the same to drive the expression of the silencing cassettes in this strawberry tissue. The approaches described here represent valuable new tools for the rapid development of improved strawberry lines. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Research Progress on the Application of Biotechnology in Fruit Crop Breeding)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

19 pages, 3047 KiB  
Article
A Strategy for the Production and Molecular Validation of Agrobacterium-Mediated Intragenic Octoploid Strawberry
by Ke Duan, Ying-Jie Zhao, Zi-Yi Li, Xiao-Hua Zou, Jing Yang, Cheng-Lin Guo, Si-Yu Chen, Xiu-Rong Yang and Qing-Hua Gao
Plants 2021, 10(11), 2229; https://doi.org/10.3390/plants10112229 - 20 Oct 2021
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2252
Abstract
Intragenesis is an all-native engineering technology for crop improvement. Using an intragenic strategy to bring genes from wild species to cultivated strawberry could expand the genetic variability. A robust regeneration protocol was developed for the strawberry cv. ‘Shanghai Angel’ by optimizing the dose [...] Read more.
Intragenesis is an all-native engineering technology for crop improvement. Using an intragenic strategy to bring genes from wild species to cultivated strawberry could expand the genetic variability. A robust regeneration protocol was developed for the strawberry cv. ‘Shanghai Angel’ by optimizing the dose of Thidiazuron and identifying the most suitable explants. The expression cassette was assembled with all DNA fragments from F. vesca, harboring a sugar transporter gene FvSTP8 driven by a fruit-specific FvKnox promoter. Transformed strawberry was developed through an Agrobacterium-mediated strategy without any selectable markers. Other than PCR selection, probe-based duplex droplet digital PCR (ddPCR) was performed to determine the T-DNA insert. Four independent transformed shoots were obtained with a maximum of 5.3% efficiency. Two lines were confirmed to be chimeras, while the other two were complete transformants with six and 11 copies of the intragene, respectively. The presence of a vector backbone beyond the T-DNA in these transformants indicated that intragenic strawberries were not obtained. The current work optimized the procedures for producing transformed strawberry without antibiotic selection, and accurately determined the insertion copies by ddPCR in the strawberry genome for the first time. These strategies might be promising for the engineering of ‘Shanghai Angel’ and other cultivars to improve agronomic traits. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Research Progress on the Application of Biotechnology in Fruit Crop Breeding)
►▼ Show Figures

Figure 1

Show export options expand_more Show export options expand_less
Select all
Export citation of selected articles as:
 
Displaying articles 1-3
Back to TopTop