WP4: Metabolomics analysis of sweet cherry cultivars

Αs the fruit is one of the most metabolite-rich organs of plants, it constitutes also an excellent model for metabolomics studies. Due to its ability to follow a relatively large number of metabolites in a single or a few analyses, metabolomics represent a holistic approach to obtain a high-resolution picture of changes in the metabolic dynamics, such as color and aroma development, sugar and acid metabolism and antioxidantrelated compounds biosynthesis, in ripen fruit. The latter metabolic changes are critical for the cherry fruit industry, since, among others, the quality sweet cherry fruits rely heavily in these attributes. Thus, metabolomics techniques have offered a promising approach for bridging the gap between genotype and phenotype and have been successfully deployed to study various aspects of fruit biology. In this package we will use a metabolite profiling approach to compare the metabolite composition across sweet cherry cultivars, allowing the investigation of the relationship between metabolic phenotype and genotype.