OMICS AS A USEFUL APPROACH TO GAIN INSIGHT INTO THE POSTHARVEST PHISIOLOGY OF CITRUS

MORENO, ALEJANDRA; PEROTTI, VALERIA; TRIPODI, KARINA; PODESTÁ, FLORENCIO; COCCO, MARIÁNGELES; BELLO, FERNANDO; VÁZQUEZ, DANIEL

Concordia

Conferencia; FOODINNOVA 2014; 2014

Postharvest storage of citrus fruit is often necessary before commercialization, either required to extendshelf life during transportation to distant markets or as a quarantine procedure. Maintaining the quality is amandatory requisite of postharvest storage. Among the most useful methods to control disease during thisperiod are heat treatments (HT), which are low impact methods that applied alone or in combination withchemical treatments are known to induce defense mechanisms and physiological changes that help citrusto cope with stressful conditions during storage while preserving internal and external fruit quality. Atpresent it is not clear how this treatment affects fruit metabolism and what is the molecular basis of thebeneficial effects. Our approach to gain insight into this matter is the application of modern techniquescalled ?omics?, mainly the use of proteomic analysis and metabolic profiling, to carry out a comparativeparallel analysis of global changes elicited by HT and/or cold storage, facilitating an understanding of therelationships between changes in specific proteins and subsequent alterations in metabolites in response tothe treatment. These comparative analyses were based on two-dimensional electrophoresis (2-DE) forproteomic and gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) and high-performance liquidchromatography/electrospray ionization-time of flight-mass spectrometry (HPLC-QTOF-MS) formetabolic profiling (the primary and the secondary metabolome, respectively). So far, our results showthat this methodology can disclose a variety of metabolic changes that can be profitably used tounderstand the molecular basis of the HT effects.