Figure 1.
Appearance of 12 litchi cultivars.
C1, ‘Kuixingqingpitian’; C2, ‘Xinqiumili’; C3, ‘Yamulong’; C4, ‘Yongxing No. 2′; C5, ‘Feizixiao’; C6, ‘Sanyuehong’; C7, ‘Meiguili’; C8, ‘Baila’; C9, ‘Baitangying’; C10, ‘Guiwei’; C11, ‘Nuomici’; C12, ‘Guinuo’.
Table 1.
Color parameters (L*, a*, b*) and hue angle (h*) of litchis at maturity.
Figure 2.
Concentrations of anthocyanins (A), chlorophylls (C), and carotenoids (E) and their correlations with hue angle (B, D, F) in the pericarp of twelve litchi cultivars.
Each point is mean ± standard error (n = 15). C1 to C12 are different cultivars explained in Figure 1. Relative coefficient r with ‘*’ indicated significantly correlated at the level of P<0.05.
Figure 3.
HPLC elution profile and peak area of individual anthocyanins.
All the red cultivars examined contained the same three peaks: A) typical HPLC elution profile of anthocyanins from pericarp of litchi cv. Nuomici; B) anthocyanin compositions and their relative levels in the pericarp of red litchi cultivars. Asterisk represents that peak 1 to 3 were cyanidin (Peak 1), cyanidin-3-glucoside (Peak 2), cyanidin-3-rutinoside (Peak 3) respectively, which were putatively identified through the comparison of retention time and spectrum characters with the published data (Lee and Wicker,1991; Rivera-López et al,1999; Zhang et al., 2004). HPLC elution profiles of anthocyanins from pericarp of the rest cultivars are presented in Figure S1.
Table 2.
Degenerate primers for cloning of anthocyanin biosynthetic genes in litchi pericarp.
Table 3.
Homologies based on nucleotide sequences for anthocyanin biosynthetic genes isolated from litchi cv. Nuomici.
Figure 4.
Expression analysis of anthocyanin biosynthetic genes (A) and their correlationship with anthocyanin concentration (B) in the pericarp of twelve litchi cultivars.
Lcactin gene was used to normalize expression of the genes under identical conditions. The vertical bars represent standard error of three replicates. C1 to C12 are different cultivars explained in Figure 1. Relative coefficient r with ‘*’ indicated significantly correlated at the level of P<0.05. Results of ANOVA test are presented in Table S2.
Table 4.
Primers for real-time PCR analysis.
Figure 5.
Effects of ABA and CPPU on pigmentation and expression of anthocyanin biosynthetic genes.
A) difference in fruit color and anthocyanin concentration in pericarp of ‘Feizixiao’ treated with ABA and CPPU; B) effects of ABA and CPPU on the expression of anthocyanin biosynthetic genes in the pericarp cv. Feizixiao; C) correlations between anthocyanin concentration and expression of anthocyanin biosynthetic genes in pericarp of ‘Feizixiao’. Lcactin gene was used to normalize expression of the genes under identical conditions. The vertical bars represent standard error of three replicates. Relative coefficient r with ‘*’ indicated significantly correlated at the level of P<0.05. Results of ANOVA test are presented in Table S3.
Figure 6.
Effects of bagging and bag removal on pigmentation and expression of anthocyanin biosynthetic genes.
A) difference in fruit color and anthocyanin concentration in fruit of ‘Feizixiao’ after bagging and bag removal; B) expression analysis of anthocyanin biosynthetic genes in the pericarp of ‘Feizixiao’ after bagging and bag removal. The vertical bars represent standard error of three replicates.