ABA mitigates chilling injury in peach fruit via the PpFERL-mediated sucrose metabolism

Peaches are susceptible to chilling injury when exposed to low temperature conditions. ABA function as a regulator for chilling damage in peach fruit. In this research, we examined an ABA-induced receptor-like protein kinase, FERONIA, whose transcript levels showed significant up-regulation during ABA mitigation of chilling injury. This study found that ABA treatment promoted the sucrose metabolism-related enzymes activities and genes transcriptions, maintained higher sucrose content. Furthermore, molecular biology tests indicated that PpFERL increased the expression of PpSPS4, a regulator of sucrose mechanism during ABA alleviating chilling injury of peaches. When transiently over-expressed PpFERL in peach fruit, the sucrose content were increased, meanwhile the expression of PpSPS4 and the activity of SPS were be enhanced. Yeast two-hybrid and biomolecular fluorescence complementation analysis revealed that PpFERL directly interacts with PpSPS4. Our findings indicate that PpFERL interacts with and positively regulates PpSPS4, which is associated with changes in SPS activity and sucrose metabolism.