Advances in Ethylene Signal Transduction in Fruits and Vegetables

Fruits and vegetables are a crucial component of a healthy diet, providing essential vitamins, minerals, fiber, and other health-promoting compounds. However, the improvement of these commodities is hindered by the need to enhance their health-promoting attributes while improving quality, postharvest shelf life, marketability, processing qualities, and consumer appeal. To address these challenges, researchers have focused on understanding key control points in global development regulation or within specific processes in fruits and vegetables. This effort is informed by substantial insights into the mechanistic basis of ethylene biosynthesis, perception, and signaling, as well as the identity of key regulators of ripening that operate upstream of or in concert with regulatory pathways that mediate the plant hormone ethylene. The tomato has emerged as a model system for studying ethylene signaling in fleshy fruit due to its commercial importance, rich genetic and biochemical information, relatively small genome, ease of genetic transformation, and availability of developmental mutants that are ripening impaired. Research on ethylene signaling in tomato has provided significant contributions to our understanding of this process. The translation of information from tomato to other fleshy-fruited species indicates that ethylene signaling and regulatory networks are conserved across a wide spectrum of fruits and vegetables. This conservation suggests that insights gained from studying ethylene signaling in tomato can be applied to other species, potentially leading to improved postharvest management and ripening control strategies. Ethylene signaling is a complex process that involves multiple regulatory systems. In addition to the primary ethylene signaling pathway, other regulatory systems coordinate ethylene production and play critical roles in ripening and senescence. These systems include the ethylene response factor (ERF) family, which is involved in the regulation of ethylene-responsive genes, and the non-ethylene signaling pathways that interact with the primary ethylene signaling pathway to modulate ripening and senescence. Future research in the ethylene signaling pathway is expected to focus on the identification of key regulators and the elucidation of the molecular mechanisms underlying ethylene signaling. This knowledge will be essential for the development of novel strategies for postharvest management and ripening control, ultimately leading to improved quality, shelf life, and marketability of fruits and vegetables.