Pecan Fruit Developmental Transcriptome

Pecans (Carya illinoinensis) are a widely cultivated tree crop in the United States and Mexico, prized for their large, edible nuts. The molecular basis of pecan fruit development and the sizing of pecan nuts remains poorly understood despite their rising economic impact. In order to determine genes which may be of interest in explaining differences in pecan nut size and key genes at different developmental stages in pecan nut development, a whole growing season transcriptomic time course analysis of whole pecan fruit was conducted on one large nut cultivar ('Mahan') and one small nut cultivar ('Tiny Tim'). Weighted Gene Co-expression Network Analysis was performed in order to cluster genes into groups which may relate to developmental timing and the nut size phenotype.