Location: Food Quality Laboratory
Project Number: 8042-43000-016-003-S
Project Type: Non-Assistance Cooperative Agreement
Start Date: May 21, 2021
End Date: Apr 30, 2025
Objective:
ARS has developed a new potential plant growth regulator to promote and inhibit fruit ripening. Those regulators have been filed for patents because they have shown effects on strawberry and tomato.
The objective of this collaboration is to investigate whether those regulators are effective in controlling fruit ripening, quality and shelf-life of tree fruits, such as sweet cherry, blue berry and apple. The Northwest is a major tree fruit production region in USA. Cooperator is a leader on tree fruit physiology and production field.
Approach:
1. ARS will provide Cooperator the regulators, and protocols for field trials.
2. Cooperator will perform field trials and monitor fruit development and ripening.
3. Cooperator will analyze fruit quality such as fruit firmness, sugar content, organic acid content, antioxidants etc, as well as shelf-life.
4. Collaborator will send ARS the fruit samples for molecular and metabolomic studies.
