The identification and interpretation of differences in the transcriptomes of organically and conventionally grown potato tubers.
In the European integrated research project SAFEFOODS, one of the aims was to further establish the potential of transcriptomics for the assessment of differences between plant varieties grown under different environmental conditions. Making use of the knowledge of cellular processes and interactions is one of the ways to obtain a better understanding of the differences found with transcriptomics. For the present study the potato genotype Santé was grown under both organic and conventional fertilizer, and each combined with either organic or conventional crop protection, giving four different treatments. Samples were derived from the European project QualityLowInputFood (QLIF). Microarray data were analyzed using different statistical tools (multivariate, principal components analysis (PCA); univariate, analysis of variance (ANOVA)) and with pathway analysis (hypergeometric distribution (HGD) and gene set enrichment analysis (GSEA)). Several biological processes were implicated as a result of the different treatments of the plants. Most obvious were the lipoxygenase pathway, with higher expression in organic fertilizer and lower expression in organic crop protection; the starch synthase pathway, with higher expression in both organic crop protection and fertilizer; and the biotic stress pathway, with higher expression in organic fertilizer. This study confirmed that gene expression profiling in combination with pathway analysis can identify and characterize differences between plants grown under different environmental conditions.
RIKILT-Institute of Food Safety (Wageningen UR), Wageningen, The Netherlands. jeroen.vandijk@wur.nl
Jeroen P
JP
van Dijk
Katarina
K
Cankar
Peter J M
PJ
Hendriksen
Henriek G
HG
Beenen
Ming
M
Zhu
Stanley
S
Scheffer
Louise V T
LV
Shepherd
Derek
D
Stewart
Howard V
HV
Davies
Carlo
C
Leifert
Steve J
SJ
Wilkockson
Kristina
K
Gruden
Esther J
EJ
Kok
D000704:Analysis of Variance; D005308:Fertilizers; D058870:Food, Organic; D020869:Gene Expression Profiling; D046228:Microarray Analysis; D058871:Organic Agriculture; D035281:Plant Tubers / Q000235:genetics*; D018749:RNA, Plant / Q000032:analysis; D011198:Solanum tuberosum / Q000235:genetics*; D059467:Transcriptome
D005308:Fertilizers; D018749:RNA, Plant