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Article|01 Mar 2021|OPEN
Multiomics-based dissection of citrus flavonoid metabolism using a Citrus reticulata × Poncirus trifoliata population
Jiaolin Mou1 , Zhehui Zhang1 , Haiji Qiu1 , Yang Lu1 , Xiang Zhu2 , Ziquan Fan2 , Qinghua Zhang3 , Junli Ye1 , Alisdair R. Fernie4 , Yunjiang Cheng1 , Weiwei Wen1 , and Xiuxin Deng,1 ,
1Key Laboratory of Horticultural Plant Biology, College of Horticulture and Forestry Sciences, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China
2Thermo Fisher Scientific, Shanghai 201206, China
3National Key Laboratory of Crop Genetic Improvement, Huazhong Agricultural University, Wuhan 430070, China
4Max-Planck-Institute of Molecular Plant Physiology, Am Müehlenberg 1, 14476 Potsdam-Golm, Germany
*Corresponding author. E-mail: wwwen@mail.hzau.edu.cn,xxdeng@mail.hzau.edu.cn

Horticulture Research 8,
Article number: 56 (2021)
doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41438-021-00472-8
Views: 762

Received: 08 Oct 2020
Revised: 25 Nov 2020
Accepted: 03 Dec 2020
Published online: 01 Mar 2021

Abstract

Deciphering the genetic basis of plant secondary metabolism will provide useful insights for genetic improvement and enhance our fundamental understanding of plant biological processes. Although citrus plants are among the most important fruit crops worldwide, the genetic basis of secondary metabolism in these plants is largely unknown. Here, we use a high-density linkage map to dissect large-scale flavonoid metabolic traits measured in different tissues (young leaf, old leaf, mature pericarp, and mature pulp) of an F1 pseudo-testcross citrus population. We detected 80 flavonoids in this population and identified 138 quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for 57 flavonoids in these four tissues. Based on transcriptional profiling and functional annotation, twenty-one candidate genes were identified, and one gene encoding flavanone 3-hydroxylase (F3H) was functionally verified to result in naturally occurring variation in dihydrokaempferol content through genetic variations in its promoter and coding regions. The abundant data resources collected for diverse citrus germplasms here lay the foundation for complete characterization of the citrus flavonoid biosynthetic pathway and will thereby promote efficient utilization of metabolites in citrus quality improvement.