Volume 20, Issue 10, Oct. 2021
The cultivated strawberry (Fragaria×ananassa) is the most economically important soft fruit species globally and always ranks first in cultivation area and yield harvest among small berries. The quality of strawberry is mainly determined by the content and variety of soluble sugars, and their accumulation during the maturation process largely determines flavor and sweetness at harvest. High sugar levels accumulate in the fruit depending on the expression of various genes associated with sugar biosynthesis, metabolism, and transportation. Invertases (INVs) play an important role in the regulation of sugar accumulation because they irreversibly catalyse the hydrolysis of sucrose into the corresponding nucleoside diphosphate-glucose, glucose or fructose in fruit. Due to the heterozygosity and complexity of the polyploid genome, research on the function of invertase genes has been especially limited in octoploid strawberry (F.×ananassa). In this work, we provided a comprehensive analysis of the INV gene family in octoploid strawberry (F.×ananassa), including the gene structure, chromosomal locations, conserved domains, and gene evolution and expression profiles during strawberry fruit development. Our study revealed that polyploid events resulted in the abundant amplification (almost three- or four-fold) of the INV gene in the F.×ananassa genome, these amplified INV genes showed dominant expression in strawberry fruit and FaCWINV1 may be involved in sugar accumulation in strawberry fruit. The photos are provided by the research team of Prof. Zhao Mizhen from Jiangsu Academy of Agricultural Sciences, China. See pages 2652–2665 for details.