Post-harvest fruit management is an essential process for the storage and distribution of fruits and vegetables after their harvest while maintaining their nutritional values, vitamins, and antioxidants content. Up to 14% of fruit and vegetable production losses are the results of post-harvest fruit and vegetable waste. It has been recently proposed that fruit ripening following harvest results of low oxygen and oxidative stress, and increased levels of ethylene, the ripening hormone in climacteric fruits. The COST Action RoxyCOST CA18210, “Oxygen sensing, a novel mean for biology and technology of fruit quality”, aims at investigating the crosstalk between low-oxygen sensing, oxidative stress and ethylene signalling for climacteric fruit ripening with the ultimate goal to propose solutions to extend the post-harvesting period of such fruits. For this purpose, it brings together European scientists with diverse expertise to deliver solutions to this issue.
This INTER-COST project will help to solve the problematics of the RoxyCOST Working Group 2 “Deciphering the mechanisms of low oxygen sensing in fruit crops” by developing a hairy root culture system in fruit crop species tomato and almond x peach hybrid. The methodology relies on the injection in the floral stem of an Agrobacterium tumefaciens strain, a plant pathogen, containing a hairy root-inducing (Ri) plasmid instead of the classical tumor-inducing (Ti) plasmid. In close collaboration with two COST partners, the teams of J. PIRRELLO (Toulouse, France), chair of the action, and Maria RUBIO CABETAS (Zaragoza, Spain), we will adapt this method to tomato and almond x peach hybrid to functionally analyse transcription factors and their selected targets in the ethylene and low oxygen-sensing pathways.
Ultimately, we will establish protocols to 1) transform roots of fruit crop tree species (S001), 2) use the transformed roots for functional genetics (S002), 3) test CRISPR-Cas9-mediated mutagenesis in almond x peach hybrid roots (S002), and 4) regenerate transgenic plants from the transformed roots (S003). This project will increase the technical expertise, knowledge, and the international collaborative network of the Czech research team, led by the applicant, H. Robert Boisivon, at CEITEC Masaryk University, Brno.

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