Rapid volatile metabolomics and genomics in large strawberry populations segregating for aroma

Volatile organic compounds (VOCs) in strawberry (Fragaria spp.) represent a large portion of the fruit secondary metabolome, and contribute significantly to aroma, flavor, disease resistance, pest resistance and overall fruit quality.
Understanding the basis for volatile compound biosynthesis and its regulation is of great importance for the genetic improvement of cultivated varieties.
Due to the complexity of the autoallooctoploid strawberry genome and the large influence of environmental factors over volatile expression, genetic studies on strawberry volatile biosynthesis typically require large segregating populations that are continually resampled for volatile expression.
This data complexity frequently limits discovery to a small number of volatiles of ideal behavior and simple genetics.
To address these problems and others, we demonstrate the ability to rapidly generate and describe the population-wide strawberry volatile metabolome through spectral reconstruction of unsupervised mass-aligned peaks.
This approach generates unbiased, population-wide quantitative data suited for identifying segregating compounds as well as multivariate statistical tests and network analyses.
Using this approach, we determined a number of quantitatively segregating volatiles which were used subsequently in QTL analysis.
We further demonstrate the application of a SNP-genotyping array with the power to resolve recombination events in the autoallooctoploid background.

VIII International Strawberry Symposium

C.R. Barbey, K.M. Folta, V.M. Whitaker, S. Verma, J. Bai

Fragaria, high-throughput phenotyping, genetic mapping, Metalign, IStraw90

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2017.1156.102