Washington, Dec 02: Rosy red apples are something that most of us simply can’t resist and now CSIRO researchers have located the gene that controls the colour of apples, a discovery that may lead to bright new apple varieties.
"The red colour in apple skin is the result of anthocyanins, the natural plant compounds responsible for blue and red colours in many flowers and fruits," says the leader of the CSIRO Plant Industry research team, Dr Mandy Walker.
"Colour is a very important part of fruit marketing. If fruit doesn't look good, consumers are far less likely to buy it, no matter how good it might taste,” she added.
"As well as giving apples their rosy red hue, anthocyanins are also antioxidants with healthy attributes, giving us plenty of reasons to study how the biochemical pathway leading to apple colour is regulated," Walker said.
A Post Doctoral Fellow with the team, Dr Adam Takos, used the latest molecular technology to measure how much particular genes were activated, or expressed, in apple skin as the fruit ripened and coloured.
"Apple growers have always known that apple colour is dependant on light – apples grown in darkness or even heavy shade don't turn red when they ripen," Dr Walker says. "That made it very likely that the gene we were looking for requires light to be activated.
By identifying master genes that were activated by light, Adam was able to pinpoint the gene that controls the formation of anthocyanins in apples, and we found that in green apples this gene is not expressed as much as in red apples," she added.
Bureau Report
First Published: Saturday, December 02, 2006, 00:00