Plant Metabolomics Approaches For Quality Traits

Ric de Vos^1,2, Sofia Moço^1,2,3, Joost Keurentjes^2,4, Flavio Borém⁵, Esra Capanoglu⁶, Yury Tikunov^1,2, Arnaud Bovy^1,2 and Robert Hall^1,2

¹ Plant Research International, Wageningen-UR, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
² Centre for BioSystems Genomics, Wageningen-UR, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
³ Laboratory of Biochemistry, Wageningen-UR, Wageningen, The Netherlands.
⁴ Laboratory of Plant Genetics, Wageningen-UR, Wageningen, The Netherlands
⁵ Federal University of Lavras, Lavras, Brasil
⁶ Food Engineering Department, Istanbul Technical University, Turkey

Plants are known to contain a huge array of metabolites present at highly variable levels, including the large and often economically important group of so-called secondary metabolites such as terpenoids, alkaloids, saponins, flavonoids, glucosinolates, polyamines, and all kinds of derivatives thereof. Dedicated software tools for data pre-processing and analyses offer possibilities for comparative metabolomics approaches in an essentially unbiased manner, enabling a comprehensive comparison of complex plant samples, for instance to establish differences between genotypes, tissues, developmental stages, etcetera, e.g. in order to identify metabolic and genetic markers related to specific quality traits. In this presentation, examples of our application of plant metabolomics approaches, based on GC-MS and LC-MS, in relation to economically important crop plant quality traits, such as flavour and taste, insect resistance and health-related phytonutrients, will be presented. For instance, in our research towards post-harvest processing effects we use large-scale metabolic profiling to determine effects of each step in the process on the quality of tomato paste and green coffee. Using comparative metabolomics of mutant and control plants, the in vivo functioning of specific genes involved in the production of quality-related metabolites can be established. Through screening large numbers of different plant genotypes, genetic variation in metabolite profiles related to economically important quality traits can be detected. By correlating metabolomics profiles of an Arabidopsis thaliana recombinant inbred population to genetic markers, novel loci controlling metabolite levels (metabolite-QTL’s) have been identified. Such genetic markers can be used in breeding programs aiming to develop novel plant varieties with improved metabolite-related quality traits.

It is concluded that metabolomics is a powerful strategy in plant research to reveal metabolic differences underlying plant quality traits, and enables us to identify growth and (a)biotic stress conditions, post-harvest processes and chromosomal regions that mostly influence metabolite composition in crop plants and products derived thereof