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Evaluation of the early defoliation trait and identification of resistance genes through a comprehensive transcriptome analysis in pears
SHAN Yan-fei, LI Meng-yan, WANG Run-ze, LI Xiao-gang, LIN Jing, LI Jia-ming, ZHAO Ke-jiao, WU Jun
2023, 22 (1): 120-138.   DOI: 10.1016/j.jia.2022.08.040
Abstract303)      PDF in ScienceDirect      

Early defoliation, which usually occurs during summer in pear trees, is gradually becoming a major problem that poses a serious threat to the pear industry in southern China.  However, there is no system for evaluating the responses of different cultivars to early defoliation, and our knowledge of the potential molecular regulation of the genes underlying this phenomenon is still limited.  In this study, we conducted field investigations of 155 pear accessions to assess their resistance or susceptibility to early defoliation.  A total of 126 accessions were found to be susceptible to early defoliation, and only 29 accessions were resistant.  Among them, 19 resistant accessions belong to the sand pear species (Pyrus pyrifolia).  To identify the resistance genes related to early defoliation, the healthy and diseased samples of two sand pear accessions, namely, the resistant early defoliation accession ‘Whasan’ and the susceptible early defoliation accession ‘Cuiguan’, were used to perform RNA sequencing.  Compared with ‘Cuiguan’, a total of 444 genes were uniquely differentially expressed in ‘Whasan’.  Combined with GO and KEGG enrichment analyses, we found that early defoliation was closely related to the stress response.  Furthermore, a weighted gene co-expression network analysis revealed a high correlation of WRKY and ethylene responsive factor (ERF) transcription factors with early defoliation resistance.  This study provides useful resistant germplasm resources and new insights into potentially essential genes that respond to early defoliation in pears, which may facilitate a better understanding of the resistance mechanism and molecular breeding of resistant pear cultivars

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Pearprocess: A new phenotypic tool  for stone cell trait evaluation in pear fruit
XUE Yong-song, XU Shao-zhuo, XUE Cheng, WANG Run-ze, ZHANG Ming-yue, LI Jia-ming, ZHANG Shao-ling, WU Jun
2020, 19 (6): 1625-1634.   DOI: 10.1016/S2095-3119(20)63193-8
Abstract111)      PDF in ScienceDirect      
The content of stone cells is an important factor for pear breeding as a high content indicates severely reduced fruit quality in terms of fruit taste.  Although the frozen-HCl method is currently a common method used to evaluate stone cell content in pears, it is limited in incomplete separation of stone cell and pulp and is time consuming and complicated.  Computer-aided research is a promising strategy in modern scientific research for phenotypic data collection and is increasingly used in studying crops.  Thus far, we lack a quantitative tool that can effectively determine stone cell content in pear fruit.  We developed a program, Pearprocess, based on an imaging protocol using computer vision and image processing algorithms applied to digital images.  Using photos of hand-cut sections of pear fruit stained with phloroglucin-HCl (Wiesner’s reagent), Pearprocess can extract and analyze image-based data to quantify the stone cell-related traits measured in this study: number, size, area and density of stone cell.  We quantified these traits for 395 pear accessions by Pearprocess and revealed large variation in different pear varieties and species.  The number of stone cells varied greatly from value of 138 to 2 866, the density of stone cells ranged from 0.0019 to 0.0632 cm2 cm–2, the distribution of stone cell area ranged from 0.06 to 2.02 cm2, and the stone cell size was between 2e-4 and 1e-3 cm2.  Moreover, trait data were correlated with fruit taste data.  We found that stone cell density is likely the most important factor affecting the taste of pear fruit.  In summary, Pearprocess is a new cost-effective web-application for semi-automated quantification of two-dimensional phenotypic traits from digital imagery using an easy imaging protocol.  This simpler, feasible and accurate method to evaluate stone cell traits of fruit is a promising new tool for use in evaluating future germplasms for crop breeding programs.
 
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