UVB exposure on peach fruit

UV-B treatment deeply influences plant physiology and biochemistry, especially by activating the expression of UV-B-specific perception mechanism.Although the UV-B-related molecular responses have been widely studied in Arabidopsis, just few works deepen the knowledge on the influence of post-harvest UV-B treatment on fruit.In this work, a transcriptomic approach was adopted to investigate the transcriptional modifications occurring in the peel of UV-B-treated peach fruit in post-harvest.Our analysis revealed a higher gene regulation after 1 h from the irradiation, compared to 3 h recovery.Analysis revealed a strong activation of the phenylpropanoid pathway, resulting in the increase in the concentration of specificflavonoid classes, such as anthocyanins, flavones, dihydroflavonols, and flavanones.Upregulation of UVR8-related genes (HY5, COP1, RUP) suggests that UV-B-triggered activation of the UVR8 pathway occurs also in post-harvest peach fruit.In conclusion, post-harvest UV-B exposure deeply affects the transcriptome of the peach peel, promoting the activation of genes implicated in the biosynthesis of phenolics, likely via UVR8.