Fruit Phenolic Profiling: A New Selection Criterion in Olive Breeding Programs.

Abstract

Olive growing is mainly based on traditional varieties selected by the growers across the centuries. The few attempts so far reported to obtain new varieties by systematic breeding have been mainly focused on improving the olive adaptation to different growing systems, the productivity and the oil content. However, the improvement of oil quality has rarely been considered as selection criterion and only in the latter stages of the breeding programs. Due to their health promoting and organoleptic properties, phenolic compounds are one of the most important quality markers for Virgin olive oil (VOO) although they are not commonly used as quality traits in olive breeding programs. This is mainly due to the difficulties for evaluating oil phenolic composition in large number of samples and the limited knowledge on the genetic and environmental factors that may influence phenolic composition. In the present work, we propose a high throughput methodology to include the phenolic composition as a selection criterion in olive breeding programs. For that purpose, the phenolic profile has been determined in fruits and oils of several breeding selections and two varieties ("Picual" and "Arbequina") used as control. The effect of three different environments, typical for olive growing in Andalusia, Southern Spain, was also evaluated. A high genetic effect was observed on both fruit and oil phenolic profile. In particular, the breeding selection UCI2-68 showed an optimum phenolic profile, which sums up to a good agronomic performance previously reported. A high correlation was found between fruit and oil total phenolic content as well as some individual phenols from the two different matrices. The environmental effect on phenolic compounds was also significant in both fruit and oil, although the low genotype × environment interaction allowed similar ranking of genotypes on the different environments. In summary, the high genotypic variance and the simplified procedure of the proposed methodology for fruit phenol evaluation seems to be convenient for breeding programs aiming at obtaining new cultivars with improved phenolic profile.

Plant phenotyping relevance

オリーブ果実のフェノール組成を育種選抜に利用するための高スループット評価法を提案し、複数環境・遺伝子型で評価している。果実形質の取得手法が研究の中心であり、単なる生物学的測定ではない。

Code and data availability

The article reports olive fruit/oil phenolic profiling data but contains no public phenotype dataset deposit, no author analysis code, models, or supplementary data links. The only URL present (FAOSTAT) is a generic external statistics source cited for production figures, not a paper-specific asset.

No evidence-backed public reproduction asset is currently recorded.