Introduction Quince (Cydonia oblonga Mill.) is a pome fruit, like apple and pear, that belongs to the family Rosaceae. It originated in northern Iran, the Hazar Sea, South Caucasus, Khurasan, and Anatolia. Its fruit is mainly used by the food industry to produce jam, jelly, and marmalade. Quince is a good source of minerals, vitamins (especially vitamin C), and sugars (Bucsek et al., 1996) as well as flavonoid compounds, such as quercetin, rutin, and kaempferol (Silva et al., 2002, 2005). The total global production of quince has reached about 677,949 metric tons, and Turkey is one of the main producer countries, along with Uzbekistan and China, and is responsible for about 19% of the total global production (Faostat, 2016). In Turkey, most of the quince cultivars originated from seedlings accidentally grown in backyards or at the borders of orchards (Özbek, 1978). There are still many natural quince accessions in different regions of Turkey that are valuable genetic resources for quince breeding. All quince cultivars and accessions belong to one species in the genus Cydonia. Identification and characterization of quince accessions morphologically are considerably difficult due to high similarities in the tree structure and fruit traits of quince plants (Yamamoto et al., 2004). Identification of relationships based on morphological characteristics has been widely used in many species including walnut (Keles et al., 2014), cherry (Rakonjac et al., 2010), and olive (Cantini et al., 1999). However, morphological characterization does not perfectly reveal the relationship due to the influence of environmental factors and low heritability (Cadee, 2000; Bucheyeki et al., 2009). DNA-based molecular markers have been effective tools to characterize plant materials for the last several decades (Lacis et al., 2009). Simple sequence repeats (SSRs) are a marker of choice due to their codominant nature, abundance in the genome, suitability for automation, high polymorphism, and repeatability (Kacem et al., 2017). One of the main advantages of SSR markers is their transferability between closely related species (Schlotterer and Tautz, 1992). The use of SSR markers for molecular characterization is well proven in different species, such as apple (Gasi et al., 2016), apricot (Hormaza, 2002), peach (Bouhadida et al., 2007), pear (Fan et al., 2013), pistachio (Zaloglu et al., 2015), and walnut (Topcu et al., 2015). Therefore, the use of SSR markers to determine the relationships among quince accessions can be highly reliable.

In this study, we aimed to develop novel genic simple sequence repeat (eSSR) markers and to study phylogenetic relationship among Pistacia species. Transcriptome sequencing was performed in different tissues of Siirt and Atlı cultivars of pistachio (Pistacia vera). A total of 37.5-Gb data were used in the assembly. The number of total contigs and unigenes was calculated as 98,831, and the length of N50 was 1,333 bp after assembly. A total of 14,308 dinucleotide, trinucleotide, tetranucleotide, pentanucleotide, and hexanucleotide SSR motifs (4-17) were detected, and the most abundant SSR repeat types were trinucleotide (29.54%), dinucleotide (24.06%), hexanucleotide (20.67%), pentanucleotide (18.88%), and tetranucleotide (6.85%), respectively. Overall 250 primer pairs were designed randomly and tested in eight Pistacia species for amplification. Of them, 233 were generated polymerase chain reaction products in at least one of the Pistacia species. A total of 55 primer pairs that had amplifications in all tested Pistacia species were used to characterize 11 P. vera cultivars and 78 wild Pistacia genotypes belonging to nine Pistacia species (P. khinjuk, P. eurycarpa, P. atlantica, P. mutica, P. integerrima, P. chinensis, P. terebinthus, P. palaestina, and P. lentiscus). A total of 434 alleles were generated from 55 polymorphic eSSR loci with an average of 7.89 alleles per locus. The mean number of effective allele was 3.40 per locus. Polymorphism information content was 0.61, whereas observed (Ho) and expected heterozygosity (He) values were 0.39 and 0.65, respectively. UPGMA (unweighted pair-group method with arithmetic averages) and STRUCTURE analysis divided 89 Pistacia genotypes into seven populations. The closest species to P. vera was P. khinjuk. P. eurycarpa was closer P. atlantica than P. khinjuk. P. atlantica-P. mutica and P. terebinthus-P. palaestina pairs of species were not clearly separated from each other, and they were suggested as the same species. The present study demonstrated that eSSR markers can be used in the characterization and phylogenetic analysis of Pistacia species and cultivars, as well as genetic linkage mapping and QTL (quantitative trait locus) analysis.

The cultivated strawberry (Fragaria × ananassa) is octoploid (2n = 8x = 56) and has been the focused fruit species of which an increasing number of molecular and genetic research has been conducted in recent years. The aim of this study is to identify the relationships between sucrose metabolism, invertase enzyme activity and gene expression in four different fruit development periods (red, pink, green and white) of two commercially important strawberry varieties ‘Rubygem’ and ‘Fortuna’. The metabolite profiles (glucose, fructose, sucrose and total sugar content) of two varieties were discovered to be extremely similar. The highest amount of total sugar was found in red fruits, while the lowest was obtained from green fruits. Invertase represents one of the key enzymes in sucrose metabolism. The lowest invertase activity was obtained from the green fruits in ‘Rubygem’ and ‘Fortuna’ during four developmental periods. In these varieties, the amount of sucrose was found to be close to glucose and fructose and the lowest amount was detected in green period, while invertase activity was relatively high during red and pink periods and invertase gene expression was determined at high levels in both primers (St-4 and St-6) in the green period. The results of the study indicated that sugar content and invertase activity were positively correlated while enzyme activity and gene expression were negatively correlated.

Introduction Carrot (Daucus carota L.) is an important vegetable crop grown worldwide. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), world carrot production in 2013 was approximately 37.2 million metric tons. The great majority of this carrot production consists of orange carrots due to the accumulation of carotenoid in their roots. Although yellow carrots with xanthophyll, red carrots with lycopene, purple carrots with anthocyanin, and white carrots with no pigmentation all exist, limited land has been dedicated to their production. Orange carrots are preferred for their high content of carotenoid, which is the precursor of vitamin A. Unlike orange carrots, purple carrots contain anthocyanin pigments. Anthocyanin pigments are water-soluble colored flavonoids that can give plant organs a red, blue, or purple color (Harborne and Williams, 2000). Due to the various health-related benefits of anthocyanins, such as protection against oxidative stress, coronary heart disease, inflammation, some types of cancer, and other age-related diseases (Ross and Kasum, 2002), the popularity of consuming an anthocyanin-rich diet has been increasing recently. In addition, depending on the pH, the color of anthocyanin can change from red to purple, and, for this reason, anthocyanin pigments have gained recent attention as a natural food colorant for use in the readyto-eat food industry. Purple carrots are rich in cyanidin glycoside-type anthocyanin pigments and can accumulate up to 17-18 mg/100 g fresh weight in their storage roots (Montilla et al., 2011). According to the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK), approximately 558,000 t of carrots were produced on 10,500 ha in Turkey in 2014. More than 93% of this production was in Konya (331,593 t), Ankara (131,400 t), and Hatay (60,483 t) provinces, and the majority of this carrot production consisted of orange carrots. Historically, purple carrots with high anthocyanin content have been used for the production of a local drink called 'şalgam' in the Mediterranean region of Turkey. However, the amount of purple carrot production for making şalgam is currently very limited. On the other hand, purple carrot production in Turkey has been increasing dramatically in recent years Abstract: Although the majority of carrots grown in Turkey and around the world are orange, the production of anthocyanin-containing purple carrots has recently increased in Turkey due to the extraction of anthocyanin from these carrots for use as a natural food colorant. Purple carrot production for this purpose is concentrated in Ereğli District in Konya Province, and open-pollinated local purple carrot cultivars or landraces have been used for this production. Genetic variation within the local purple carrot populations in this region is of interest to plant breeders worldwide for the development of new purple carrot cultivars. Therefore, in this study, genetic variation within the purple carrot population grown in Ereğli District was assessed using SSR markers. Purple carrot ...

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