Firm berries are highly appreciated by table grape consumers. Cell wall composition is one of the main factors influencing the firmness of table grape berries. Nevertheless, the biological factors driving changes in berry firmness remain unclear. In the present work, we evaluated the firmness of berries of Vitis vinifera cv. Thompson Seedless. We selected two orchards displaying contrasting berry firmness and evaluated polar metabolites and cell wall composition. Our results suggest that berries from the soft orchard exhibited a higher accumulation of sugars at veraison whereas berries from the hard orchard accumulated the same sugars at harvest plus a higher amount of glucose monosaccharide at the cell wall. Thus, this study opens new insights about a connection between metabolic and cell wall changes with fruit firmness in a table grape variety, suggesting that it is possible to use metabolomic tools to identify metabolic biomarkers associated with table grape berry firmness.

坚挺的浆果受到鲜食葡萄消费者的高度赞赏。细胞壁组成是影响食用葡萄浆果硬度的主要因素之一。然而，驱动浆果硬度变化的生物学因素仍然不清楚。在目前的工作中，我们评估了葡萄的浆果的硬度简历。汤普森无核。我们选择了两个果园表现出不同的浆果硬度，并评估了极性代谢产物和细胞壁组成。我们的结果表明，来自软果园的浆果在糖霜中表现出较高的糖分积累，而来自硬质果园的浆果在收获时积累了相同的糖分，并且在细胞壁处积累了更高数量的葡萄糖单糖。因此，这项研究为鲜食葡萄品种的果实硬度与代谢和细胞壁变化之间的联系开辟了新的见解，这表明可以使用代谢组学工具鉴定与鲜食葡萄浆果硬度相关的代谢生物标志物。