ABSTRACT
Fruits can be dened as fertilized and matured ovaries that bear seeds to maintain generations. They are rich in different types of vitamins (C: ascorbic acid; B1: thiamine; B3: niacin; B6: pyridoxine; and B9: folic acid), minerals, and dietary bers (Craig and Beck, 1999; Wargovich, 2000). During ripening, many fruits accumulate different types of bioactive chemicals such as avonoids (including anthocyanins, avones, and avonols) and carotenoids which protect humans against cancer, cardiovascular diseases, and other chronic diseases (Rao and Rao, 2007). In addition, anthocyanins increase antioxidant levels in serum (Mazza et al., 2002), regulate cholesterol distribution (Xia et al., 2007), and protect human red blood cells (RBCs) from oxidative damage (Tedesco et al., 2001). Fleshy fruits such as tomato, apple, peach, grape, pear, kiwifruit, watermelon, papaya, and mango are economically important, either fresh or as ingredients of foods such as jams, cookies, mufns, yoghurt, ice cream, different types of cakes, and drinks such as fruit juices, wine, brandy, and so on. Therefore, the fruit development and ripening process is of foremost importance for fruit crop researchers. Fruit ripening is a complex process which is modulated by genetic, biochemical, developmental, and environmental processes (Klee and Giovannoni, 2011), leading to the accumulation of sugars, avors, pigments (Singh et al., 2010), and changes in the fruit texture. The fruit-ripening control is mainly a combination of different molecular pathways with environmental factors, and a crucial contribution to its elucidation has been given by using ripening-affected mutants (Klee and Giovannoni, 2011). These studies allowed the identication of key regulators of the ripening process, thus opening the way for their use in genetic improvement programs. The genetic improvement of these fruit crops through traditional breeding programs is a long-term process, and therefore
CONTENTS
8.1 Background ......................................................................................................................... 251 8.2 Genomics ............................................................................................................................. 252 8.3 Transcriptomics ..................................................................................................................258
