VvARF19 represses VvLBD13-mediated cell wall degradation to delay softening of grape berries

Abstract

Fruit softening directly impacts its storage life, transportability, and customer acceptance. Auxin plays a key role during fruit ripening, but the underlying mechanisms of how auxin regulates fruit softening remain unclear. In this study, we investigated the regulatory roles of auxin on berry cell wall degradation during grape (Vitis vinifera L.) softening. During grape berry development, berry firmness and auxin content both firstly increase and then decrease, and peaks occur 4-6 weeks after full blooming. Exogenous NAA (α-naphthalene acetic acid, a synthetic auxin) treatment inhibits berry softening by delaying propectin, cellulose, and hemicellulose degradation, which maintains cell wall integrity in the grape flesh. Weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA) showed that VvLBD13, correlated with VvARF19, could be a key gene in this delaying of berry softening, and is involved in auxin signal transduction and cell wall degradation metabolism. Overexpression and transient overexpression of VvLBD13 in tomato or in grape berry indicate that VvLBD13 accelerates hemicellulose degradation by binding the promoters of VvXTH10 (xyloglucan endotransglucosylase/hydrolase 10) and VvEXPLA1 (expansion-like A1), which results in rapid softening after veraison. Collectively, this research furnishes an exhaustive understanding of the auxin-driven regulatory mechanisms of grape berry softening.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Henan Province Outstanding Foreign Scholar Program (GZS2024005), the International Cooperation program of Henan Province (242102521011), and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32002017). We would like to thank Dr Pedro Martínez-Gómez (Spanish National Research Council) for helpful comments on the manuscript.

Author contributions

All authors read and approved the final manuscript. X.Y. and J.F. conceived and designed the experiments; M.L. and C.J.N. performed the experiments; S.H., Z.X., and J. (Jiajun) L. analyzed the data; M.L. wrote the paper; Z.L., C.H., X.Z., B.T., J.C., W.W., and J. (Jidong) L. interpreted the data and revised the manuscript.

Data availability

All data needed to support the conclusions in this paper are present in the paper and/or Supplementary Data Tables S1-4.

Conflict of interests

The authors identify that the research was independent of any commercial or financial relationships.

Supplementary data

Supplementary data are available at Horticulture Research online.

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