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
. 2024 Dec 19;24(1):1216.
doi: 10.1186/s12870-024-05934-4.

Exogenous phenylalanine application effects on phytochemicals, antioxidant activity, HPLC profiling, and PAL and CHS genes expression in table grapes (Vitis vinifera cv. 'Qzl Ouzum')

Afsaneh Allahveran Oosalo  1 , Lotfali Naseri  2 , Abolfazl Alirezalu  1 , Reza Darvishzadeh  3 , Samad Nejad Ebrahimi  4
Affiliations

Exogenous phenylalanine application effects on phytochemicals, antioxidant activity, HPLC profiling, and PAL and CHS genes expression in table grapes (Vitis vinifera cv. 'Qzl Ouzum')

Afsaneh Allahveran Oosalo et al. BMC Plant Biol. .

Abstract

Background: Grape (Vitis vinifera L.) is one of the most important fruit products globally and has a high nutritional value with potent antioxidant and anti-cancer activities. In current years, phenylalanine application has been particularly noticed for enhancing the nutritional quality of horticultural crops. With the aim of quality improvement, the effects of foliar application of phenylalanine at 5 concentrations (0, 100, 500, 1000, and 2000 μM) on Vitis vinifera cv. 'Qzl Ouzum' berry compositions were studied. The studied parameters included antioxidant activity, phenolics, flavonoids, anthocyanin, catalase and phenylalanine ammonia-lyase enzyme activity, and phenolic compounds content based on HPLC analyses (myricetin, quercetin, kaempferol, syringetin, catechin, gallic acid, caffeic acid, p-coumaric acid, resveratrol).

Results: Phenylalanine at 1000 μM increased total phenols, flavonoids, anthocyanins, and PAL enzyme activity. In addition, HPLC analysis revealed a significant accumulation of individual phenolic compounds by phenylalanine treatment. The highest values were recorded in the treatments with 100 and 500 μM phenylalanine for most of the phenolic components. Real-time quantitative RT-PCR results showed that the expression of PAL and CHS genes was induced by phenylalanine. The highest PAL and CHS gene expression was observed at 500 μM and then at 1000 μM phenylalanine treatment.

Conclusions: With the use of phenylalanine, the activity of the PAL and CHS enzyme and PAL and CHS gene expression were significantly increased and led to a greater accumulation of phenolic compounds and antioxidant activiety. This study suggests that the use of phenylalanine as a main precursor for the synthesis of phenolic compounds, can improve the phenolic composition of grapes and could be a practical approach to advance fruit quality in the production of grape cv. 'Qzl Ouzum'.

Keywords: PAL and CHS genes; Antioxidant capacity; Phenolic compounds; Phenylalanine; Phenylalanine ammonia-lyase.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

Declarations. Ethics approval: The study was conducted with the explicit permission of the vineyard owner. Consent to participate: Not Applicable. Consent for publication: Not Applicable. Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.

Figures

Fig. 1
Fig. 1
Qzl Ouzum table grape
Fig. 2
Fig. 2
Antioxidant activity (A), total phenolic content (TPC: B), Total flavonoid content (TFC: C), and total anthocyanin content (TAC: D) of ‘Qızıl Uzum’ table grape berries in control and grape samples treated with different doses (0, 100, 500, 1000, 2000 μM) of phenylalanine. Means indicated with different lowercase letters are significantly different at p ≤ 0.05 according to Duncan’s Multiple Range Test
Fig. 3
Fig. 3
PAL (A) and CAT (B) enzymes activity of Qzl Ouzum table grape berries in control and treated grape samples with different doses (0, 100, 500, 1000, 2000 μM) of phenylalanine. Means indicated with different letters are significantly different at p ≤ 0.05 according to Duncan’s Multiple Range Test
Fig. 4
Fig. 4
PAL (A) and CHS (B) genes expression of ‘Qzl Ouzum’ table grape berries in control and treated grape samples with different doses (0, 100, 500, 1000, 2000 μM) of phenylalanine. Means indicated with different lowercase letters are significantly different at p ≤ 0.05 according to Duncan’s Multiple Range Test
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Similar articles

See all similar articles

Cited by

References

    1. Zhou K, Raffoul J. Potential anticancer properties of grape antioxidants. J Oncol. 2012;803294. 10.1155/2012/803294 - PMC - PubMed
    1. Garde-Cerdan T, Lopez R, Portu J, Gonzalez-Arenzana L, Lopez-Alfaro I, Santamaria P. Study of the effects of proline, phenylalanine, and urea foliar application to tempranillo vineyards on grape amino acid content. Comparison with commercial nitrogen fertilizers. Food Chem. 2014;163:136–41. 10.1016/j.foodchem.2014.04.101 - PubMed
    1. Chassy AW, Douglas OA, Waterhouse AL. Tracing phenolic metabolism in Vitis vinifera berries with 13C6–phenylalanine: implication of an unidentified intermediate. J Agric Food Chem. 2014;62:2321–6. 10.1021/jf402229u - PubMed
    1. Aghaei K, Ghasemi Pirbalouti A, Mousavi A, Naghdi Badi H, Mehnatkesh A. Effects of foliar spraying of L-phenylalanine and application of bio-fertilizers on growth, yield, and essential oil of hyssop [Hyssopus officinalis L. Subsp. Angustifolius (Bieb)]. Biocatal Agric Biotechnol. 2019;21:101318. 10.1016/j.bcab.2019.101318
    1. Portu J, López-Alfaro I, Gómez-Alonso S, López R, Garde-Cerdán T. Changes on grape phenolic composition induced by grapevine foliar applications of phenylalanine and urea. Food Chem. 2015;180:171–80. 10.1016/j.foodchem.2015.02.042 - PubMed

MeSH terms

LinkOut - more resources