Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2019 Mar 20;24(6):1114.
doi: 10.3390/molecules24061114.

Metabolic Profiling of Pitaya (Hylocereus polyrhizus) during Fruit Development and Maturation

Yawei Wu  1   2 , Juan Xu  3 , Yizhong He  4 , Meiyan Shi  5 , Xiumei Han  6 , Wenyun Li  7   8 , Xingwu Zhang  9 , Xiaopeng Wen  10
Affiliations

Metabolic Profiling of Pitaya (Hylocereus polyrhizus) during Fruit Development and Maturation

Yawei Wu et al. Molecules. .

Abstract

Pitaya (Hylocereus polyrhizus) has attracted much interest from consumers as it is a novelty fruit with high nutrient content and a tolerance to drought stress. As a group of attractive pigment- and health-promoting natural compounds, betalains represent a visual feature for pitaya fruit quality. However, little information on the correlation between betalains and relevant metabolites exists so far. Currently, color (Commission International del'Eclairage, CIE) parameters, betalain contents, and untargeted metabolic profiling (gas chromatography-time-of-flight-mass spectrometry, GC⁻MS and liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry, LC⁻MS) have been examined on 'Zihonglong' fruits at nine different developmental stages, and the variation character of the metabolite contents was simultaneously investigated between peel and pulp. Furthermore, principal component analysis (PCA) and partial least-squares discriminant analysis (PLS-DA) were used to explore metabolite profiles from the fruit samples. Our results demonstrated that the decrease of amino acid, accompanied by the increase of sugars and organic acid, might contribute to the formation of betalains. Notably, as one of four potential biomarker metabolites, citramalic acid might be related to betalain formation.

Keywords: betalains; biomarker metabolites; fruit ripening; metabolic profiling; pitaya (Hylocereus polyrhizus; ‘Zihonglong’).

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Betalain biosynthetic pathway (drawn according to [4]); TYR, tyrosinase; CYP76AD1, cytochrome P450; DODA, DOPA 4, 5-dioxygenase; BvMYB1/Y; *S, spontaneous steps; GT, glycosyl transferase; AT, acyltransferase; DOPA, 5, 6-dihydroxy-phenylalanine.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Experimental design of pitaya ‘Zihonglong’ (Hylocereus polyrhizus) harvested at nine stages of development.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Betacyanin and betaxanthin contents during different fruit-developmental stages.
Figure 4
Figure 4
Principal component analysis (PCA) score plots and metabolite hot map derived from nontargeted metabolome profiling. (A) Metabolite PCA from the GC–MS of fruit peel and pulp; metabolite PCA from the LC−MS of fruit (B) peel and (C) pulp (bright-red dots, 10 DPA; blue dots, 16 DPA; red-brown dots, 19 DPA; gray dots, 21 DPA; green dots, 23 DPA; pink dots, 25 DPA; dark-red dots, 26 DPA; bright-blue dots, 27 DPA; dark-blue dots, 29 DPA); (D) metabolite heat map from GC–MS and LC–MS/MS.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Developmental concentration of amino acids (A) and secondary metabolites (B) in pitaya fruit.
Figure 6
Figure 6
Developmental concentration of major sugars and organic acid in pitaya fruit. Note: The unit of sugar and acid content in the figure is mg/g DW.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

    1. Suh D.H., Lee S., Heo D.Y., Kim Y.S., Cho S.K., Lee S., Lee C.H. Metabolite profiling of red and white pitayas (Hylocereus polyrhizus and Hylocereus undatus) for comparing betalain biosynthesis and antioxidant activity. J. Agric. Food Chem. 2014;62:8764–8771. doi: 10.1021/jf5020704. - DOI - PubMed
    1. García-Cruza L., Dueñas M., Santos-Buelgas C., Valle-Guadarrama S., Salinas-Moreno Y. Betalains and phenolic compounds profiling and antioxidant capacity of pitaya (Stenocereus spp.) fruit from two species (S. pruinosus and S. stellatus) Food Chem. 2017;234:111–118. doi: 10.1016/j.foodchem.2017.04.174. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Tanaka Y., Sasaki N., Ohmiya A. Biosynthesis of plant pigments: Anthocyanins, betalains and carotenoids. Plant J. 2008;54:733–749. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-313X.2008.03447.x. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Polturak G., Heinig U., Grossman N., Battat M., Leshkowitz D., Malitsky S., Rogachev I., Aharoni A. Transcriptome and Metabolic Profiling Provides Insights into Betalain Biosynthesis and Evolution in Mirabilis jalapa. Mol. Plant. 2018;11:189–204. doi: 10.1016/j.molp.2017.12.002. - DOI - PubMed
    1. Gandía-Herrero F., García-Carmona F. Biosynthesis of betalains: Yellow and violet plant pigments. Trends Plant Sci. 2013;18:334–343. doi: 10.1016/j.tplants.2013.01.003. - DOI - PubMed

MeSH terms