The sensory quality of fruit has become a major criterion in making the
purchasing decision by consumers. Breeding programs have mainly been directed,
from the post-harvest stand point, towards improving shelf-life. Chance seedlings or
mutants with improved agronomic traits and/or extended shelf-life have been used
for introgressing the long shelf-life character and eventually improved sensory
quality traits in commercial genotypes of apple, melon or tomato. Because the plant
hormone ethylene plays a central role in both storability and ripening of climacteric
fruit, the generation by biotechnology of ethylene-inhibited fruit has offered a
powerful tool to better understand, at the molecular and genetic level, the interrelations
between storability and sensory quality. In the melon, inhibition of ethylene
synthesis results is a strong inhibition of the synthesis of aroma volatiles while the
accumulation of sugars is not affected or is even improved. The softening of the flesh
is strongly affected but not abolished. Mid or long shelf-life melons generated by
classical breeding present the same behavior. The generation of recombinant inbred
lines by crossing a typical climacteric melon (Cantaloupe Charentais of the
cantalupensis group) with a non climacteric melon (PI161375 of the agrestis
chinensis group) allowed to demonstrate that the climacteric character is conferred
by 2 duplicated loci only, which are of great importance for the regulation of
storability and sensory quality. Due to the importance of aroma volatiles in sensory
quality and to the strong negative correlation between aroma production and
ethylene synthesis, we have developed a research program aimed at isolating genes
involved in the synthesis of aroma volatiles. We will report on the recent advances in
the field with special emphasis on the characterization of genes responsible for the
synthesis of esters, a family of compounds crucial for the flavor of many fruit
