SummaryAlthough great progress has been made towards understanding the role of abscisic acid (ABA) and sucrose in fruit ripening, the mechanisms underlying the ABA and sucrose signalling pathways remain elusive. In this study, transcription factor ABA‐stress‐ripening (ASR), which is involved in the transduction of ABA and sucrose signalling pathways, was isolated and analysed in the nonclimacteric fruit, strawberry and the climacteric fruit, tomato. We have identified four ASR isoforms in tomato and one in strawberry. All ASR sequences contained the ABA stress‐ and ripening‐induced proteins and water‐deficit stress‐induced proteins (ABA/WDS) domain and all ASR transcripts showed increased expression during fruit development. The expression of the ASR gene was influenced not only by sucrose and ABA, but also by jasmonic acid (JA) and indole‐3‐acetic acid (IAA), and these four factors were correlated with each other during fruit development. ASR bound the hexose transporter (HT) promoter, which contained a sugar box that activated downstream gene expression. Overexpression of the ASR gene promoted fruit softening and ripening, whereas RNA interference delayed fruit ripening, as well as affected fruit physiological changes. Change in ASR gene expression influenced the expression of several ripening‐related genes such as CHS,CHI, F3H,DFR,ANS,UFGT,PG,PL,EXP1/2,XET16, Cel1/2 and PME. Taken together, this study may provide new evidence on the important role of ASR in cross‐signalling between ABA and sucrose to regulate tomato and strawberry fruit ripening. The findings of this study also provide new insights into the regulatory mechanism underlying fruit development.

We elucidate grapevine evolution and domestication histories with 3525 cultivated and wild accessions worldwide. In the Pleistocene, harsh climate drove the separation of wild grape ecotypes caused by continuous habitat fragmentation. Then, domestication occurred concurrently about 11,000 years ago in Western Asia and the Caucasus to yield table and wine grapevines. The Western Asia domesticates dispersed into Europe with early farmers, introgressed with ancient wild western ecotypes, and subsequently diversified along human migration trails into muscat and unique western wine grape ancestries by the late Neolithic. Analyses of domestication traits also reveal new insights into selection for berry palatability, hermaphroditism, muscat flavor, and berry skin color. These data demonstrate the role of the grapevines in the early inception of agriculture across Eurasia.

Sucrose synthase (SS) is widely considered as the key enzyme involved in the plant sugar metabolism that is critical to plant growth and development, especially quality of the fruit. The members of SS gene family have been identified and characterized in multiple plant genomes. However, detailed information about this gene family is lacking in grapevine (Vitis vinifera L.). In this study, we performed a systematic analysis of the grape (V. vinifera) genome and reported that there are five SS genes (VvSS1–5) in the grape genome. Comparison of the structures of grape SS genes showed high structural conservation of grape SS genes, resulting from the selection pressures during the evolutionary process. The segmental duplication of grape SS genes contributed to this gene family expansion. The syntenic analyses between grape and soybean (Glycine max) demonstrated that these genes located in corresponding syntenic blocks arose before the divergence of grape and soybean. Phylogenetic analysis revealed distinct evolutionary paths for the grape SS genes. VvSS1/VvSS5, VvSS2/VvSS3 and VvSS4 originated from three ancient SS genes, which were generated by duplication events before the split of monocots and eudicots. Bioinformatics analysis of publicly available microarray data, which was validated by quantitative real-time reverse transcription PCR (qRT-PCR), revealed distinct temporal and spatial expression patterns of VvSS genes in various tissues, organs and developmental stages, as well as in response to biotic and abiotic stresses. Taken together, our results will be beneficial for further investigations into the functions of SS gene in the processes of grape resistance to environmental stresses.

Salinity is ubiquitous abiotic stress factor limiting viticulture productivity worldwide. However, the grapevine is vulnerable to salt stress, which severely affects growth and development of the vine. Hence, it is crucial to delve into the salt resistance mechanism and screen out salt-resistance prediction marker genes; we implicated RNA-sequence (RNA-seq) technology to compare the grapevine transcriptome profile to salt stress. Results showed 2472 differentially-expressed genes (DEGs) in total in salt-responsive grapevine leaves, including 1067 up-regulated and 1405 down-regulated DEGs. Gene Ontology (GO) and Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) annotations suggested that many DEGs were involved in various defense-related biological pathways, including ROS scavenging, ion transportation, heat shock proteins (HSPs), pathogenesis-related proteins (PRs) and hormone signaling. Furthermore, many DEGs were encoded transcription factors (TFs) and essential regulatory proteins involved in signal transduction by regulating the salt resistance-related genes in grapevine. The antioxidant enzyme analysis showed that salt stress significantly affected the superoxide dismutase (SOD), peroxidase (POD), catalase (CAT) and glutathione S-transferase (GST) activities in grapevine leaves. Moreover, the uptake and distribution of sodium (Na+), potassium (K+) and chlorine (Cl−) in source and sink tissues of grapevine was significantly affected by salt stress. Finally, the qRT-PCR analysis of DE validated the data and findings were significantly consistent with RNA-seq data, which further assisted in the selection of salt stress-responsive candidate genes in grapevine. This study contributes in new perspicacity into the underlying molecular mechanism of grapevine salt stress-tolerance at the transcriptome level and explore new approaches to applying the gene information in genetic engineering and breeding purposes.

Anthocyanins are naturally occurring compounds, member of the flavonoid groups of photochemical, involved in defense against the damaging effects of UV irradiation in plants and protect from many oxidants. The anthocyanins, group of pigments are relatively small and diverse flavonoid family in nature, and responsible for the attractive colors, red and purple to blue in many plants. Presence of pigments in flowers and fruits seems to provide attraction for pollination and aiding seed distribution, it also provides antiviral and antimicrobial activities, however their occurrence in the vacuoles remains ambiguous. During the last decades, anthocyanin gene expression and many structural genes encoding enzymes has been extensively studied in fruits, flowers and leaves in many plants.In addition, the genetic regulating mechanism, their biosynthesis and other factors involved are well described. The biosynthesis pathway of anthocyanin is a complex with diverse branches responsible to produce variety of metabolites. In general Anthocyanins, production through the flavonoid path, are a class of vital phenolic compounds. Over six thousand diverse anthocyanins have been reported from various species. So far, the potential health benefits of anthocyanins have been reported in the contexts of their antioxidant properties. Anthocyanins are also extensively studied for their several positive effects on body. Based on these facts, the present review briefly summarizes recent advances, highlighting the importance of biosynthetic pathway of anthocyanins, thus will serve to encourage advance investigation in this field.