Publications by authors named "Aaron Fait"

Elevated temperature has already caused a significant loss of wine growing areas and resulted in inferior fruit quality, particularly in arid and semi-arid regions. The existence of broad genetic diversity in is key in adapting viticulture to climate change; however, a lack of understanding on the variability in berry metabolic response to climate change remains a major challenge to build strategies for quality fruit production. In the present study, we examined the impact of a consistent temperature difference between two vineyards on polyphenol metabolism in the berries of 20 red cultivars across three consecutive seasons (2017-2019).

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A multi-year study of perennial Z. dumosum shows a consistent seasonal pattern in the changes of petiole metabolism, involving mainly organic acids, polyols, phenylpropanoids, sulfate conjugates, and piperazines. GC-MS and UPLC-QTOF-MS-based metabolite profiling was performed on the petioles of the perennial desert shrub Zygophyllum dumosum Boiss (Zygophyllaceae).

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Continually increasing global temperature could severely affect grape berry metabolite accumulation and ultimately wine polyphenol concentration and color intensity. To explore the effect of late shoot pruning on grape berry and wine metabolite composition, field trials were carried out on cv. Malbec and cv.

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Grafting has the potential to improve melon fruit yield and quality, but it is currently held that a lack of compatibility between the rootstock and scion compromises such an effect. To throw light on this subject, we studied melon-pumpkin graft combinations with different levels of compatibility to assess to the effect of the rootstock identity on melon fruit yield and quality, including total fruit -diphenols, total flavonoids, and primary fruit metabolites. Melon cv.

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Accessing freshwater resources for agriculture becomes more complex due to increasing demands and declining water quality. Alternative water sources, such as saline water, require ad hoc solutions. Therefore, understanding roots' response to saline water is crucial for future agriculture.

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The factors underlying the plant collapse of certain melon-pumpkin graft combinations are not fully understood. Our working hypothesis was that impairment of photoassimilates transport in incompatible combinations induces an imbalance in the homeostasis of root auxin (indole-3-acetic acid; IAA) and of cytokinins, probably triggering plant collapse. Root IAA and cytokinins levels in the presence and absence of fruit and changes in root and scion metabolites were investigated in compatible and incompatible combinations.

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Grafting has been demonstrated to significantly enhance the salt tolerance of crops. However, breeding efforts to develop enhanced graft combinations are hindered by knowledge-gaps as to how rootstocks mediate scion-response to salt stress. We grafted the scion of cultivated M82 onto rootstocks of 254 tomato accessions and explored the morphological and metabolic responses of grafts under saline conditions (EC = 20 dS m) as compared to self-grafted M82 (SG-M82).

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Elicitation treatments of grape cell cultures with methyl jasmonate (MeJA), ultraviolet-C (UV-C) irradiation, and sucrose induce mild production of stilbenes and flavonoids due to limited substrate availability. However, these treatments cause a synergistic boost of stilbenes production when applied to two phenylalanine (Phe)-enriched transgenic grape cell lines, * + and * + . The combined treatment of UV-C elicitation on the Phe-fed * + line resulted in the highest content of stilbenes (37.

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Exploiting consistent differences in radiation and average air temperature between two experimental vineyards (Ramat Negev, RN and Mitzpe Ramon, MR), we examined the impact of climate variations on total carotenoids, redox status, and phenylpropanoid metabolism in the berries of 10 white wine grapevine () cultivars across three consecutive seasons (2017-2019). The differences in carotenoid and phenylpropanoid contents between sites were seasonal and varietal dependent. However, the warmer RN site was generally associated with higher HO levels and carotenoid degradation, and lower flavonol contents than the cooler MR site.

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Stilbenes and flavonoids are two major health-promoting phenylpropanoid groups in grapes. Attempts to promote the accumulation of one group usually resulted in a decrease in the other. This study presents a unique strategy for simultaneously increasing metabolites in both groups in cv.

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The effect of the rootstock on the acropetal and basipetal transport of photoassimilates and hormones was studied in the 'Kiran' (Ki) melon cultivar grafted onto pumpkin rootstocks with different degrees of compatibility. A complementary experiment was performed to compare the incompatible combination (as evidenced by plant collapse at the fruit ripening stage), designated Ki/r53, with self-grafted r53/r53 as a model compatible combination. Both experiments showed the accumulation of a number of amino acids, sugars, and sugar alcohols in the scion of the incompatible Ki/r53 grafts.

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Stilbenes are phytoalexins with health-promoting benefits for humans. Here, we boost stilbenes' production, and in particular the resveratrol dehydrodimer viniferin, with significant pharmacological properties, by overexpressing () under unlimited phenylalanine (Phe) supply. cell cultures were co-transformed with a feedback-insensitive DAHP synthase (*) and genes, under constitutive promoters.

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Global climate change and the expected increase in temperature are altering the relationship between geography and grapevine () varietal performance, and the implications of which are yet to be fully understood. We investigated berry phenology and biochemistry of 30 cultivars, 20 red and 10 white, across three seasons (2017-2019) in response to a consistent average temperature difference of 1.5°C during the growing season between two experimental sites.

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We engineered a machine learning approach, MSHub, to enable auto-deconvolution of gas chromatography-mass spectrometry (GC-MS) data. We then designed workflows to enable the community to store, process, share, annotate, compare and perform molecular networking of GC-MS data within the Global Natural Product Social (GNPS) Molecular Networking analysis platform. MSHub/GNPS performs auto-deconvolution of compound fragmentation patterns via unsupervised non-negative matrix factorization and quantifies the reproducibility of fragmentation patterns across samples.

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Grapevine represents a particularly interesting species as concerns phenotypic plasticity, considering that the , meaning the contribution of the geography, geology, and climate of a certain place, together with the agronomical practices utilized, may deeply influence the berry phenotype at the physiological, molecular, and biochemical levels. This phenomenon leads to the production of wines that, although produced from the same variety, exhibit different enological profiles and represents an issue of increasing interest from both a biological and an economic point of view. The main objective of the present study was to deepen the understanding of phenotypic plasticity in grapevine, trying to dissect the role of one its important components - the soil - by investigating the singular effect that different physico-chemical soil properties can produce in terms of berry plasticity at the phenological, physiological, and biochemical levels in a red and a white variety of great economic importance in Italy and overseas: Corvina and Glera.

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Low temperature is a prominent limiting factor for tropical originated crops production in temperate regions, particularly during cool-season production. The diverse response of two rootstocks (Canon-sensitive and S103-tolerant to low root-zone temperature) was studied when exposed to aeroponically different temperature regimes at the root zone: constant low temperature of 14°C low root-zone temperature (LRZT), transient exposure to LRZT of 27-14-27°C and control temperature of 27°C. Gas exchange, shoot dry mass, and root morphology were measured.

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Article Synopsis
  • Plants adapt to environmental changes through various genetic and biochemical mechanisms, triggering large-scale metabolic and transcriptional rearrangements.
  • The paper focuses on how these rearrangements affect a plant's stress response, using Arabidopsis thaliana data to study metabolic gene co-expression under heat and drought stress.
  • Findings suggest that stress can cause both tightening and expansion of the co-expression network, which may enhance our understanding of plant stress tolerance and suggests further research is needed across different conditions and genetic backgrounds.
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Background: Rootstock has a significant impact on plant growth and development, including fruit maturation. However, the existence of mutual interaction between scion and rootstock is often neglected. To explore the origin of different fruit quality traits in citrus, we studied the effect of rootstock and the reciprocal interaction between scion and rootstock of nine combinations; three mandarin varieties grafted on three different rootstocks.

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The identification and understanding of metabolic pathways is a key aspect in crop improvement and drug design. The common approach for their detection is based on gene annotation and ontology. Correlation-based network analysis, where metabolites are arranged into network formation, is used as a complentary tool.

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Background: Grape leaves provide the biochemical substrates for berry development. Thus, understanding the regulation of grapevine leaf metabolism can aid in discerning processes fundamental to fruit development and berry quality. Here, the temporal alterations in leaf metabolism in Merlot grapevine grown under sufficient irrigation and water deficit were monitored from veraison until harvest.

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Solar irradiance and air temperature are characterized by dramatic circadian fluctuations and are known to significantly modulate fruit composition. To date, it remains unclear whether the abrupt, yet predictive, diurnal changes in radiation and temperature prompt direct metabolic turn-over in the fruit. We assessed the role of fruit insolation, air temperature, and source-tissue CO assimilation in the diurnal compositional changes in ripening grape berries.

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Studies on the active pathways and the genes involved in the biosynthesis of L-phenylalanine-derived volatiles in fleshy fruits are sparse. Melon fruit rinds converted stable-isotope labeled L-phe into more than 20 volatiles. Phenylpropanes, phenylpropenes and benzenoids are apparently produced via the well-known phenylpropanoid pathway involving phenylalanine ammonia lyase (PAL) and being (E)-cinnamic acid a key intermediate.

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Combined quantitative trait loci (QTL) and expression-QTL (eQTL) mapping analysis was performed to identify genetic factors affecting melon (Cucumis melo) fruit quality, by linking genotypic, metabolic and transcriptomic data from a melon recombinant inbred line (RIL) population. RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) of fruit from 96 RILs yielded a highly saturated collection of > 58 000 single-nucleotide polymorphisms, identifying 6636 recombination events that separated the genome into 3663 genomic bins. Bin-based QTL analysis of 79 RILs and 129 fruit-quality traits affecting taste, aroma and color resulted in the mapping of 241 QTL.

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Grapes are one of the major fruit crops and they are cultivated in many dry environments. This study comprehensively characterizes the metabolic response of grape berries exposed to water deficit at different developmental stages. Increases of proline, branched-chain amino acids, phenylpropanoids, anthocyanins, and free volatile organic compounds have been previously observed in grape berries exposed to water deficit.

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Postveraison water deficit is a common strategy implemented to improve fruit composition in many wine-growing regions. However, contrasting results are often reported on fruit size and composition, a challenge for generalizing the positive impact of this technique. Our research investigated the effect of water deficit (WD) imposed at veraison on Merlot grapevines, during two experimental seasons (2014-2015).

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