Agricultural scientists: find the "delicious" taste of fruits and vegetables

Watermelon, melon, cucumber, pumpkin, wax gourd, towel gourd. They are all cucurbitaceae vegetables, melons and fruits. Of course, the gourd is also one of the most important members of the edible plant family in the world.

However, the same "gourd brothers", why some sweet, some bitter, even if it is the same plant, some places (if true) sweet, some places (such as roots) bitter?

A few days ago, a Chinese research team discovered the secret-by applying big data to the study of plant secondary metabolism, researchers revealed that cucurbitaceae plants have a very similar history of domestication of bitter traits. Using this feature, breeders will be able to "accurately" regulate the bitterness of vegetables and fruits, so as to cultivate new varieties with better quality and taste.

Find the "delicious" taste for the cucumber

On November 29, Associate researcher Shang Yi and researcher Huang Sanwen of the vegetable Research Institute of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences organized the article "Convergence, domestication and differential Evolution of bitter characteristics of Cucurbitaceae crops", which was published online in the internationally renowned academic journal Natural plants.

As the standard of living is getting higher and higher, consumers begin to complain that some of the vegetables and fruits sold in the market are not delicious and lack their proper taste. The gain and loss of taste is closely related to the distribution and accumulation of secondary metabolites in plants.

Therefore, to find the "delicious" taste means that the distribution of secondary metabolites in crops must be precisely regulated-the edible parts should accumulate pleasant compounds, but the production of "natural pesticides" should be avoided. Because plants contain tens of thousands of metabolites with different structures, in order to achieve this goal, we must make a breakthrough in the field of basic research, which has always been the focus and difficulty of research in this field.

Compared with field crops, the research basis of vegetable crops is relatively weak. Since 2005, Huang Sanwen's research team has been committed to vegetable crop genome, transcriptome, variant group and other big data research, which provides an indispensable basic tool for the study of important horticultural traits and molecular breeding. Subsequently, the team's Shang Yi team began to try to apply genomes and other big data to the study of plant secondary metabolism. The internationally famous biomedical paper evaluation system evaluates their research work in this way: "shows the role of cutting-edge genomics in plant domestication and synthetic biology research."

Under the guidance of this research, Chen Huiming, a team partner and researcher of Hunan vegetable Research Institute, cultivated four new cucumber varieties in South China, which completely solved the production problem that cucumbers in South China are easy to become bitter. It is also a successful practice of "writing papers on the earth" in the basic research of vegetables.

After the cucumber comes the watermelon.

After its initial success, Shang Yi's team quickly devoted itself to another important scientific question: whether there are similar molecular mechanisms in other plants of the family Cucurbitaceae, such as watermelons. If so, it means that the bitter taste research results of cucumber can be used for reference, and a controllable bitterless variety cultivation program can also be realized in other crops to completely solve the effect of bitterness on the commodity quality of cucurbitaceae crops.

After two years of research, they revealed that Cucurbitaceae plants have a very similar history of bitterness domestication. Making use of this characteristic of convergence and domestication, breeders can accurately adjust the bitter characters in watermelon, muskmelon roots and fruits, on the one hand, ensure that bitter substances are not accumulated in fruits and ensure commodity quality; on the other hand, increase the bitter content in the root to resist the invasion of diseases and insect pests in the soil. (according to Xinhua Daily Telegraph)