Sammendrag
A crucial consideration for strawberry producers in Norway and other northern countries is winter freezing damage. A long-term goal of the Norwegian strawberry breeding is to increase winter hardiness and to improve fruit quality. Due to the complexity involved in regulating and enhancing freezing tolerance, the progress in the improvement of cultivars using traditional screening methods have had limited success. Thus, the development of molecular markers for freezing hardiness would facilitate the selection work for this trait. In this effort, we have developed and adopted state-of-art molecular tools to investigate cold response in strawberry plants during the acclimation phase resulting in the identification of a large number of genes, proteins, and distinct metabolites that correspond to cold/freezing tolerance in strawberry. To identify proteins responsible for freezing tolerance in strawberry we have examined alterations in protein levels in strawberry varieties that differ in cold tolerance using either 2-DE gel analysis followed by LC-MS/MS analysis or a shotgun MS/MS approach. Proteomic analysis suggested 30 potential biomarkers that showed significant changes in the cultivated strawberry in response to cold. In addition, GC-MS-based metabolite profiling revealed the up-regulation of carbohydrates, polyols, amino acids, TCA intermediates, and other distinct secondary metabolites after cold treatment. Transcriptional analysis of the cold acclimated samples also confirmed the regulation upon cold-treatment with varietal differences in strawberry. Moreover, several F2-populations from the model F. vesca parents diverging in cold tolerance have been developed in order to facilitate mapping of QTLs. We have already identified a range of SSRs that segregate in our diploid experimental populations, and a framework map using these will be developed. The knowledge attained from these endeavors is expected to expedite breeding of strawberries to achieve freezing tolerant lines and provide an integrative understanding of the molecular pathways that underlie this characteristic.
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