Abstract

Fruits are an important part of a well balance diet, providing benefits not only in basic nutrition, but also improving overall human health and well-being. A better understanding of the mechanisms by which fruits grow and develop, may provide information associated with desirable commercial characteristics such as fruit size, flesh firmness and softening, stone lignification, sugar content and anthocyanin production. Fruit size has been attributed to two factors: the increase in the number of cells (cell division) and the increase in the size of the cells (cell expansion) during fruit development. It has been demonstrated that phytohormones such as auxins and cytokinins may play a key role during these processes. However, the molecular mechanisms by which these hormones are acting on the fruits are poorly understood. The recently sequenced peach genome provides a tool by which we may begin to decipher the role that these phytohormones may play in fruit growth and development. Towards this end, using a comparative genomic approach, we have identified putative cytokinin biosynthetic pathway genes expressed in peach fruits. Furthermore, we are determining the differential expression of these genes during peach fruit development using qPCR analyses.