Giulia Pasqualetto
Biochemical, metabolic and molecular characterization of pear-apple hybrids: PEARAPPLE-Omics.
Supervisor: Dr Mickael Arnaud Malnoy (Edmund Mach Foundation, FEM)
Co-supervisor: Dr Stefan Martens (FEM), Dr Susan Elizabeth Gardiner (Plant & Food Research, PFR), Dr Vincent Bus (PFR), Dr Claudia Wiedow (PFR) and Dr David Chagné (PFR)
Apple and pear are economically important fruit crops well known for their unique textures, flavours and nutritional qualities. Both genera are characterised by a specific pattern of secondary metabolites which directly affect not only the resistance or susceptibility towards certain diseases, but also have significant impact on flavour and nutritional value of the fruits. The similar chromosome number, genome size, their recent divergence date, together with DNA-markers have led to the assumption that apple and pear genomes might be highly co-linear.
This PhD project is between Edmund Mach Foundation (Trento, IT), Plant & Food Research (Palmerston-North, NZ) and University of Udine.
The task of this project is to understand whether putative apple-pear hybrid plants available from previous Italian and New Zealand projects, are true hybrids or not.
Hybrids between apple and pear provide a unique germplasm resource for genomic, transcriptomic and metabolic profiling studies. It also opens the possibility to apply advanced breeding strategies in the next future.
Additional putative hybrids between pear and apple rootstocks have been obtained in tissue culture as well as ‘Fast Flowering’ apple-pear plants that are being used to quickly obtain further generations and carry on advance breeding more rapidly.
This PhD project will utilize comparative genomic approaches (HRM analysis, SSRs analysis, SNP-chip analysis) to identify the genetic differences among the putative hybrids and its offspring. Furthermore, the PhD will describe the genus-specific metabolite pattern and will assess the resistance or susceptibility to Fire Blight, apple Scab and pear Scab in these apple-pear hybrids. The use of genomics and other -omics technologies (metabolomics, transcriptomics) will provide insight into the genetic reorganization of the hybrids. In addition, it will enhance and accelerate the breeding process for the development of crops with improved characteristics for both producers and consumers, by introducing desired traits from the pear gene pool into apple and vice versa.
Biography and contacts
Giulia Pasqualetto was born in 1992 in Buti (PI), Italy. In 2014 she obtained the bachelor’s degree in Agricultural Science (102/110) at the University of Pisa. Here, in 2016, she also achieved the master’s degree in Agrifood production and agroecosystem management (110/110 cum laude). In October 2017 she obtained a PhD position at the University of Udine and she is currently working on the joint project described above in the ‘Genomics and Advanced Biology’ unit at Edmund Mach Foundation in San Michele all’ Adige (TN) and in the ‘Mapping & Markers team’ at Plant & Food Research Institute in Palmerston North (NZ).