Academic Consortium Publications for February 2024

Orange trees in Florida are susceptible to Huanglongbing (HLB), which is a bacterium-caused citrus greening disease. HLB-affected trees don’t make fruit with the sweet orange taste you know and love. Controlling the sap-sucking insect that spreads the bacterium is one solution, but in war with an insect never underestimate the insect. Breeding HLB-resistant orange trees is another solution, but success requires the fruit taste like oranges. Waiting for trees mature to find out how the fruit tastes is slow. The better approach learn what genes and proteins give the sweet orange taste and breed accordingly. A recent paper “Chemical and genetic basis of orange flavor” by Fan et al. in Science Advances investigates juice samples from oranges, mandarins, trifoliate oranges, and various hybrids using six prediction models used to relate sensory with chemical data. The best model found 26 compounds believed to underlie the sweet orange taste. Genes associated with these compounds were investigated. A previously unknown alcohol acyltransferase (CsAAT1) was discovered to promote the ester biosynthesis needed to achieve the elusive orange flavour. Kudos to these researchers for an interesting study. Read about this and other papers from the Compusesense Academic Consortium here.