Standardizing postharvest quality and biochemical phenotyping for precise population comparison

Abstract

Selection of plant material with desired traits from different populations can be difficult, if not impossible, when evaluation methods are not standardized. Discerning comparable fruit postharvest traits among populations is particularly problematic because techniques and reporting protocols are often unique or non-existent for those crucial to quality and storability. Moreover, difficulties evaluating postharvest traits may be exacerbated by the dynamic nature of fruit ripening, introducing error even into intrapopulation comparisons. With the advent of biochemical phenotyping of fruit quality, opportunities to standardize evaluation of these and other important fruit postharvest traits are materializing. Standardized trait evaluation among breeding programs and, most importantly, germplasm collections is expected to allow more precise comparison between populations, expediting integration of economically important fruit quality traits into new populations as well as facilitating marker discovery.