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Plant function and evolutionary biology
RESEARCH ARTICLE

Fruit growth and sink strength in olive (Olea europaea) are related to cell number, not to tissue size

Adolfo Rosati https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4126-8196 A D , Silvia Caporali A , Sofiene B. M. Hammami B C , Inmaculada Moreno-Alías B and Hava Rapoport B
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Consiglio per la ricerca in agricoltura e l’analisi dell’economia agraria – centro di ricerca Olivicoltura, Frutticoltura e Agrumicoltura, via Nursina 2, 06049 Spoleto (PG), Italy.

B Instituto de Agricultura Sostenible-CSIC, Campus Alameda del Obispo, Avenida Menéndez Pidal S/N, 14004 Córdoba, Spain.

C Université de Carthage, Institut National Agronomique de Tunisie (INAT), Laboratoire LR13AGR01, 43 Avenue Charles Nicolle, 1082 Tunis, Tunisia.

D Corresponding author. Email: adolfo.rosati@crea.gov.it

Functional Plant Biology 47(12) 1098-1104 https://doi.org/10.1071/FP20076
Submitted: 17 March 2020  Accepted: 17 June 2020   Published: 16 July 2020

Abstract

The relationship between tissue (mesocarp and endocarp) growth and either tissue initial (i.e. in the ovary at bloom) size or cell number was studied using the olive cultivar Leccino (L) and its mutated clone (LC), which produces tetraploid fruits. LC ovaries were 2.7 times the volume of L ovaries, but contained an overall similar number of much larger cells. This allowed decoupling cell number and ovary size, which are normally closely correlated. With this decoupling, cell number in the ovary correlated with tissue growth in the fruit while tissue size in the ovary did not. Cell size in the ovary was inversely correlated with the tissue relative growth from bloom to harvest (i.e. the ratio between final and initial tissue size). These results support the hypothesis that cell number and not tissue size are related to fruit growth and sink strength, and that cell size in the ovary tissues is a good predictor of tissue growth, across cultivars and tissues, even when cell size is strongly affected by ploidy.

Additional keywords: activity, division, endocarp, expansion, mesocarp, ploidy, sink strength, size.


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