Changes in soluble sugars and the expression of sugar transporter protein genes in strawberry crowns responding to Colletotrichum fructicola infection.

Strawberry (Fragaria × ananassa) production has been greatly hampered by anthracnose crown rot caused by Colletotrichum fructicola. Crown, the modified stem of strawberry, is a sink organ involved in sugar allocation. Some Sugar Transport Proteins (STPs) are involved in competition for sugars between pathogen and host. However, the chemical nature and involvement of strawberry STPs (FaSTPs) in crown rot development is largely elusive. To reveal how strawberry alters soluble sugars and upregulates STPs in responses to C. fructicola, high performance liquid chromatograph and FaSTP expression analysis were performed in the crowns of three strawberry varieties, following a genome-wide identification of FaSTPs. Both C. fructicola and mock treatment/control changed glucose, fructose and sucrose accumulation in strawberry crowns. With increasing infection duration, the hexose/sucrose ratio increased in all varieties; no such trend was clearly visible in mock-treated plants. A total of 56 FaSTP loci scattered across four subgenomes were identified in octoploid strawberry, and most of the protein products of these genes had a preferential location on plasma membrane. Putative fungal elicitor responsive cis-elements were identified in the promoters of more than half FaSTPs. At least eight members were upregulated in strawberry crowns during C. fructicola invasion. Of them, FaSTP8 expression was markedly enhanced in three varieties at all time points except for 3 dpi in 'Jiuxiang'. RNAseq data retrieval further validated the expression responses of FaSTPs to Colletotrichum spp. In summary, this work identified several FaSTP candidate genes responsive to Colletotrichum fructicola invasion, demonstrated changes in soluble sugar levels in strawberry crowns as a result of infection, and laid the groundwork for future efforts to engineer strawberry resistance to Colletotrichum spp.

Supplementary information: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s12298-024-01523-9.