Bioactive compound profiling of olive fruit: the contribution of genotype

The health, therapeutic, and organoleptic characteristics of olive oil depend on functional bioactive compounds, such as phenols, tocopherols, squalene, and sterols. Genotype plays a key role in the diversity and concentration of secondary compounds peculiar to olive. In this study, the most important bioactive compounds of olive fruit were studied in numerous international olive cultivars during two consecutive seasons. A large variability was measured for each studied metabolite in all 61 olive cultivars. Total phenol content varied on a scale of 1–10 (3831–39,252 mg kg1) in the studied cultivars. Squalene values fluctuated over an even wider range (1–15), with values of 274 to 4351 mg kg1. Total sterols ranged from 119 to 969 mg kg1, and total tocopherols varied from 135 to 579 mg kg1 in fruit pulp. In the present study, the linkage among the most important quality traits highlighted the scarcity of cultivars with high content of at least three traits together. This work provided sound information on the fruit metabolite profile of a wide range of cultivars, which will facilitate the studies on the genomic regulation of plant metabolites and development of new olive genotypes through genomics-assisted breeding.EEA San JuanFil: Mousavi, Soraya. National Research Council. Institute of Biosciences and Bioresources; ItaliaFil: Stanzione, Vitale. National Research Council. Institute for Agricultural and Forest Systems of the Mediterranean; ItaliaFil: Mariotti, Roberto. National Research Council. Institute of Biosciences and Bioresources; ItaliaFil: Mastio, Valerio.Instituto Nacional de Tecnología Agropecuaria (INTA). Estación Experimental Agropecuaria San Juan; Argentina.Fil: Mastio, Valerio. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas; ArgentinaFil: Azariadis, Aristotelis. Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Chania. Department of Horticultural Genetics and Biotechnology; GreciaFil: Passeri, Valentina. National Research Council. Institute for Agricultural and Forest Systems of the Mediterranean; ItaliaFil: Valeri, Maria Cristina. National Research Council. Institute of Biosciences and Bioresources; ItaliaFil: Baldoni, Luciana. National Research Council. Institute of Biosciences and Bioresources; ItaliaFil: Bufacchi, Marina. National Research Council. Institute for Agricultural and Forest Systems of the Mediterranean; Itali

Prehistoric Plant Exploitation and Domestication: An Inspiration for the Science of De Novo Domestication in Present Times

De novo domestication is a novel trend in plant genetics, where traits of wild or semi-wild species are changed by the use of modern precision breeding techniques so that they conform to modern cultivation. Out of more than 300,000 wild plant species, only a few were fully domesticated by humans in prehistory. Moreover, out of these few domesticated species, less than 10 species dominate world agricultural production by more than 80% today. Much of this limited diversity of crop exploitation by modern humans was defined early in prehistory at the emergence of sedentary agro-pastoral cultures that limited the number of crops evolving a favorable domestication syndrome. However, modern plant genetics have revealed the roadmaps of genetic changes that led to these domestication traits. Based on such observations, plant scientists are now taking steps towards using modern breeding technologies to explore the potential of de novo domestication of plant species that were neglected in the past. We suggest here that in this process of de novo domestication, the study of Late Paleolithic/Late Archaic and Early Neolithic/Early Formative exploration of wild plants and identification of neglected species can help identify the barriers towards domestication. Modern breeding technologies may then assist us to break these barriers in order to perform de novo domestication to increase the crop species diversity of modern agriculture