Metabolite Profiles of Sugarcane Culm Reveal the Relationship Among Metabolism and Axillary Bud Outgrowth in Genetically Related Sugarcane Commercial Cultivars

Abstract

Metabolic composition is known to exert influence on several important agronomic traits, and metabolomics, which represents the chemical composition in a cell, has long been recognized as a powerful tool for bridging phenotype–genotype interactions. In this work, sixteen truly representative sugarcane Brazilian varieties were selected to explore the metabolic networks in buds and culms, the tissues involved in the vegetative propagation of this species. Due to the fact that bud sprouting is a key trait determining crop establishment in the field, the sprouting potential among the genotypes was evaluated. The use of partial least square discriminant analysis indicated only mild differences on bud outgrowth potential under controlled environmental conditions. However, primary metabolite profiling provided information on the variability of metabolic features even under a narrow genetic background, typical for modern sugarcane cultivars. Metabolite–metabolite correlations within and between tissues revealed more complex patterns for culms in relation to buds, and enabled the recognition of key metabolites (e.g., sucrose, putrescine, glutamate, serine, and myo-inositol) affecting sprouting ability. Finally, those results were associated with the genetic background of each cultivar, showing that metabolites can be potentially used as indicators for the genetic background.

BRANCHED1: A Key Hub of Shoot Branching

“…Sugars are well known to promote bud outgrowth in many species (Leduc et al, 2014; Rameau et al, 2015; Kebrom, 2017; Tarancón et al, 2017; Ferreira et al, 2018), and the relationship between sugars and bud outgrowth has been investigated for years (Maurel et al, 2004; Chao et al, 2007; Girault et al, 2010; Kebrom et al, 2010, 2012; Henry et al, 2011; Rabot et al, 2012; Mason et al, 2014; Barbier et al, 2015; Fichtner et al, 2017). Sugar effects are seemingly dependent on environmental conditions (Corot et al, 2017).…”

Metabolomics and transcriptomics analyses of sugarcane variety SP80-3280 throughout development in the field

“…The highest number of metabolites were present in the leaves and decreased down the stem ( Figure 5) which agree with previous metabolomics studies conducted on sugarcane tissue (Glassop et al, 2007). Interestingly, a relatively higher number of metabolites were reported in the current study in comparison to other untargeted sugarcane metabolomics studies in the literature (Bosch et al, 2003;Ferreira et al, 2018;Glassop et al, 2007), thus, contributing to knowledge gaps regarding the sugarcane metabolome and presenting an improved method for conducting sugarcane metabolomics studies.…”

“…A metabolomics study done on the SP80-3280 variety using GC-MS reported the presence of 70 metabolites in the +1 leaf tissue including sugars, alcohols, phenols, amino acids, organic acids, inorganic and fatty acids (Ribeiro et al, 2012). Similarly, the use of GC-MS by Ferreira et al (2018) for the metabolic profiling of sugarcane culm and bud tissues allowed for the isolation and These metabolite numbers reported are still far below the estimated number of structurally and biologically diverse plant metabolites of between 200,000 and 1 milion (Dixon & Strack, 2003;Fang et al, 2019;Rai et al, 2017).…”

Field microenvironments regulate crop diel transcript and metabolite rhythms

“…The 100 μl of the organic phase was dried and derivatized as previously described (Roessner et al, 2001). 1 μl of the derivatized samples were analyzed on a Combi-PAL autosampler (Agilent Technologies) coupled to an Agilent 7890 gas chromatograph coupled to a Leco Pegasus 2 time-of-flight mass spectrometer (LECO, St. Joseph, MI, USA) in both split (1:40) and splitless modes (Weckwerth et al, 2004;Ferreira et al, 2018). Chromatograms were exported from Leco ChromaTOF software (version 3.25) to R software.…”