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JXB Advance Access originally published online on May 8, 2009
Journal of Experimental Botany 2009 60(9):2689-2699; doi:10.1093/jxb/erp122
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© 2009 The Author(s).
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/2.0/uk/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. This paper is available online free of all access charges (see http://jxb.oxfordjournals.org/open_access.html for further details)

RESEARCH PAPER

Co-ordination of early and late ripening events in apples is regulated through differential sensitivities to ethylene

Jason W. Johnston, Kularajathaven Gunaseelan, Paul Pidakala, Mindy Wang and Robert J. Schaffer*

The New Zealand Institute For Plant & Food Research Limited, Private Bag 92169, Auckland, New Zealand

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: rschaffer{at}hortresearch.co.nz

In this study, it is shown that anti-sense suppression of Malus domestica 1-AMINO-CYCLOPROPANE-CARBOXYLASE OXIDASE (MdACO1) resulted in fruit with an ethylene production sufficiently low to be able to assess ripening in the absence of ethylene. Exposure of these fruit to different concentrations of exogenous ethylene showed that flesh softening, volatile biosynthesis, and starch degradation, had differing ethylene sensitivity and dependency. Early ripening events such as the conversion of starch to sugars showed a low dependency for ethylene, but a high sensitivity to low concentrations of ethylene (0.01 µl l–1). By contrast, later ripening events such as flesh softening and ester volatile production showed a high dependency for ethylene but were less sensitive to low concentrations (needing 0.1 µl l–1 for a response). A sustained exposure to ethylene was required to maintain ripening, indicating that the role of ethylene may go beyond that of ripening initiation. These results suggest a conceptual model for the control of individual ripening characters in apple, based on both ethylene dependency and sensitivity.

Key words: ACC oxidase 1 (MdACO1), apple, ethylene, fruit ripening, Malus

Received 18 January 2009; Revised 22 March 2009 Accepted 24 March 2009


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