Ioannis Ganopoulos

Institute of Plant Breeding and Genetic Resources -ELGO DIMITRA

Forest species in the course of their evolution have experienced several environmental challenges, which since historic times include anthropogenic pollution. The effects of pollution on the genetic and epigenetic diversity in black pine (Pinus nigra) forests were investigated in the Amyntaio – Ptolemais – Kozani Basin, which has been for decades t...

By applying three different LED light treatments designated as Blue (B), Red(R)/Blue(B), Red(R) and White (W) light as well as the control, the effect on Diplotaxis tenuifolia phenotype (yield and quality), physiological, biochemical, molecular status as well as growing systems’ resources use efficiency, was examined. We observed that basic leaf ch...

Dill (Anethum graveolens L.) is an aromatic herb widely used in the food industry, with several commercial cultivars available with different qualitative characteristics. Commercial cultivars are usually preferred over landraces due to their higher yield and also the lack of improved landraces than can be commercialized. In Greece, however, traditi...

Vicia faba L. (faba bean) is one of the most promising pulse crops due to its nutritional value and high nitrogen fixation capacity. The aim of the present study was to compare the genetic diversity and the seed metabolite profiles of five genetic materials of faba bean. Specifically, three newly developed advanced lines (KK18, KK14 and KK10) and t...

The term “terroir” has been widely employed to link differential geographic phenotypes with sensorial signatures of agricultural food products, influenced by agricultural practices, soil type and climate. Nowadays, the Geographical Indications labeling has been developed to safeguard the quality of plant-derived food that is linked to a certain ter...

Faba bean (Vicia faba L.) is an important grain legume with high protein content (approximately 25–30%) and high nutritional value. It is broadly cultivated in temperate areas both for human consumption and as animal feed. According to FAOSTAT (2020), the total cultivated area of faba bean reached approximately 2.5 million ha, yielding more than 4....

Psidium guajava is a new crop cultivated in Greece, with a potential pharmaceutical and ornamental uses. An efficient and reliable protocol for in vitro clonal propagation of P. guajava from seeds was used. Five different media were examined. Shoot proliferation succeeded on a new basal medium (BB) supplemented with a modified vitamin solution (vit...

Plant responses to salinity are becoming increasingly understood, however, salt priming mechanisms remain unclear, especially in perennial fruit trees. Herein, we showed that low-salt pre-exposure primes olive (Olea europaea) plants against high salinity stress. We then performed a proteogenomic study to characterize priming responses in olive root...

Grapevine ( Vitis vinifera L.) is a major worldwide crop of high economic importance, tightly interwoven with the traditions and the culture of many civilizations. The Greek vineyard is one of the oldest in the world composed of an ample number of highly diverse indigenous landraces. However, over the last decades the local cultivated grapevine ger...

The term “terroir” has been widely employed to link differential geographic phenotypes with sensorial signatures of agricultural food products, influenced by agricultural practices, soil type and climate. Nowadays, the Geographical Indications labeling encapsulated by the concept of terroir has been developed to safeguard the quality of plant-deriv...

Sideritis euboea is a perennial medicinal, local endemic species to mountainous areas of Central and Southern Evia Island (Greece) with isolated populations threatened with extinction. In this context, a genetic and phytochemical survey has been performed to evaluate the present status of S. euboea inter- and intra-population diversity in three mou...

Mechanical stress of kiwifruit is of major importance since it is directly related to fruit quality and postharvest losses. However, the role of mechanical stress in kiwifruit postharvest metabolism remains poorly explored. The present work characterizes the impact of mechanical stress, applied as compression forces (147.1 N), in 'Hay-ward' kiwifru...

The role of calcium in fruit ripening has been established, however knowledge regarding the molecular analysis at fruit tissue-level is still lacking. To address this, we examined the impact of foliar-applied calcium (0.5% CaCl2) in the ripening metabolism in skin and flesh tissues of the sweet cherry ‘Tragana Edessis’ fruit at the harvest stage. E...

In the forthcoming era of climate change and degradation of culturable land, there is an urgent need to secure global food supply in a sustainable manner. Unravelling the genetic mysteries underlying interactions between functional genetic and metabolic networks through fostering the use of high-throughput -omic technologies can serve as a valuable...

Wild-growing Cornelian cherries (Cornus mas L., Cornaceae) are well-known native fruits in Greece since ancient times that are still consumed locally nowadays. Modern research has highlighted the value of Cornelian cherries as functional food with exceptional health benefits on account of the fruits’ biochemical profile. However, apart from local c...

Background Natural products are not only positioned in the heart of traditional medicine but also in modern medicine as many current drugs are coming from natural sources. Apart from the field of medicine and therapeutics, natural products are broadly used in other industrial fields such as nutrition, skincare products and nanotechnology. Methods...

Fruit is constantly challenged by wounding events, inducing accelerated ripening and irreversible metabolic changes. However, cognate mechanisms that regulate this process are little known. To expand our knowledge of ripening metabolism induced by wounding, an artificial-wound global transcriptome investigation combined with metabolite profiling st...

The traditionally edible aerial parts of rock samphire (Crithmum maritimum L.) could be a valuable functional food or feed ingredient due to their high antioxidant capacity, ascorbic acid content, and rich content in secondary metabolites such as phenolics and flavonoids. The first objective of this study was to evaluate eighteen genotypes derived...

Greenhouse production of baby leaf vegetables grown in hydroponic floating trays has become extremely popular in recent years. Rocket (Eruca sativa Mill.) can grow in temperatures varying between 10 and 20 °C; nevertheless, a root-zone temperature (RZT) range of 18–23 °C is considered optimal for high productivity, photosynthesis, and production of...

The Cucurbitaceae provide food and sustenance almost the entire world over, in economically advanced areas as well as resource-poor areas, and encompass over two dozen crop plant species. Worldwide, the mostly widely grown and consumed cucurbits are watermelons, melons, cucumbers, squash, and pumpkins. As with all crops, yield quantity and quality...

In the context of sustainable utilisation of valuable but neglected plant resources, a multifaceted study is presented herein for Greek native genotypes of elderberry (Sambucus nigra L., Caprifoliaceae), a species with an appreciated pharmaceutical and nutritional value. At the first phase, fresh plant materials (leaves, softwood cuttings) were col...

Genome-wide transcriptome analysis is a method that produces important data on plant biology at a systemic level. The lack of understanding of the relationships between proteins and genes in plants, necessitates a further thorough analysis at a proteogenomic level. Recently, our group generated a quantitative proteogenomic atlas of 15 sweet cherry...

Dogroses belong to a taxonomically difficult genus and family and represent important phytogenetic resources associated with high ornamental, pharmaceutical-cosmetic and nutritional values, thus suggesting a potentially high exploitation merit. Triggered by these prospects, wild-growing Rosa canina populations of Greece were selected for investigat...

Genome-wide transcriptome analysis provides systems-level insights into plant biology. Due to the limited depth of quantitative proteomics our understanding of gene-protein-complex stoichiometry is largely unknown in plants. Recently, the complexity of the proteome and its cell/tissue specific distribution boost the research community to the integr...

Salinity is a serious constraint that reduces olive crop productivity. Here, we defined metabolite and gene expression changes in various tissues of olive trees (cv. ‘Chondrolia Chalkidikis’) exposed to 75 mM NaCl for 45 days. Results showed that salinity induced foliar symptoms and impaired growth and photosynthetic parameters. The content of Na⁺...

Sweet cherry fruit cracking is a complex physiological disorder that causes significant economic losses. Despite many years of research there is a lack of understanding of the mechanisms involved in cracking. Here, skin and flesh tissue from the cracking susceptible 'Early Bigi’ and the cracking tolerant ‘Regina’ cultivars were sampled prior and ju...

Parsley ( Petroselinum crispum ) aromatic, edible leaves are used fresh or dried as a herb, but also for their pharmaceutical properties. Given the profound concern to high nutritious and pharmaceutical value of superior plant’s germplasm, a survey is presented in this study on the phenotypic, genetic and phytochemical characterization of fifteen G...

There is a persistent interest in innovative and multifunctional ingredients in biology research. With regards to this, natural sources have an important role due to their multiple benefits. Thus, this study aims to present the pleiotropic activity of Prunus avium L. extract on human primary fibroblasts for proving its efficacy in dermis-related pr...

The aim of the present study was to investigate the impact of exogenous melatonin (0. 5 mM) application through pre-harvest foliar spray and postharvest immersion, alone or in combination, on ripening parameters of sweet cherry (cv. Ferrovia) fruit and their relationship with bioactive compounds and gene expression at harvest as well after cold sto...

Maturity is one of the most important factors associated with the quality of olive products, however the molecular events underlying olive drupe development remain poorly characterized. Using proteomic and metabolomic approaches, this study investigated the changes in the olive drupes (cv. Chondrolia Chalkidikis) across six developmental stages (S1...

The olive tree (Olea europaea L. subsp. europaea) is the most important perennial crop in the Mediterranean region, producing table olives and oil, both appreciated for their nutraceutical value. Although olive oil quality traits have been extensively studied, much less attention has been paid to olive drupe. Olive drupe ripening is an extremely co...

Background: Summer squash (Cucurbita pepo: Cucurbitaceae) are a popular horticultural crop for which there is insufficient genomic and transcriptomic information. Gene expression atlases are crucial for the identification of genes expressed in different tissues at various plant developmental stages. Here, we present the first comprehensive gene exp...

Salt stress is an important factor limiting plant productivity by affecting plant physiology and metabolism. To explore salt tolerance adaptive mechanisms in the model legume Medicago truncatula, we used three genotypes with differential salt-sensitivity: TN6.18 (highly sensitive), Jemalong A17 (moderately sensitive), and TN1.11 (tolerant). Cellula...

Exogenous application of RNA molecules is a potent method to trigger RNA interference (RNAi) in plants in a transgene-free manner. So far, all exogenous RNAi (exo-RNAi) applications have aimed to trigger mRNA degradation of a given target. However, the issue of concomitant epigenetic changes was never addressed. Here, we report for the first time t...

Sweet cherry germplasm contains a high variety of phenotypes, which are associated to fruit size and shape, sugar content etc. High phenotypic variation can be a result of genetic or epigenetic diversity, that may interact through time. Recent studies provide evidence that besides allelic variation, epi-allelic variation can establish new heritable...

Abstract: A selection of sesame (Sesamum indicum L.) landraces of different eco-geographical origin and breeding history have been characterized using 28 qualitative morpho-physiological descriptors and 7 EST-SSR markers coupled with HRM analysis. The most variable qualitative traits that could efficiently discriminate landraces, as revealed by the...

Background: Progress in the field of evolutionary forest ecology has been hampered by the huge challenge of phenotyping trees across their ranges in their natural environments, and the limitation in high-resolution environmental information. Findings: The GenTree Platform contains phenotypic and environmental data from 4,959 trees from 12 ecolog...

Motivation: Trait variation within species can reveal plastic and/or genetic responses to environmental gradients, and may indicate where local adaptation has occurred. Here, we present a dataset of rangewide variation in leaf traits from seven of the most ecologically and economically important tree species in Europe. Sample collection and trait a...

Key message This work provides the first system-wide datasets concerning metabolic changes in calcium-treated fruits, which reveal that exogenously applied calcium may specifically reprogram sweet cherry development and ripening physiognomy. Abstract Calcium modulates a wide range of plant developmental processes; however, the regulation of fruit...

An amplicon metagenomic approach based on the ITS1 region of fungal rDNA was employed to identify the composition of fungal communities associated with diseases of pear fruits during postharvest storage. The sampled fruits were harvested at an orchard using routine management practices involving treatments with various chemical fungicides and were...

The current study characterizes the physicochemical, sensory and bioactive compound traits of twenty-two sweet cherry accessions, namely breeding lines, landraces and modern cultivars, embodying the majority of Greek germplasm. The evaluated accessions differ in several quality traits including colour parameters and textural properties as well as s...

An RNA sequencing (RNA-Seq) approach was employed to determine the induced responses of mature kiwifruits infected with Botrytis cinerea, the second most important phytopathogen in commercial crops. In total, we identified 2795 differentially expressed genes (DEGs) across a broad and time-dependent transcriptional reprogramming during infection. Su...

So far, biotechnological RNAi approaches in plants have been based on RNAi-inducing transgenes and/or transgenic plants. Here, we describe novel methods for the exogenous delivery in plants of RNA molecules having the potential to trigger RNAi in a transgene-free manner.

Sweet cherry (Prunus avium L.) trees are both economically important fruit crops but also important components of natural forest ecosystems in Europe, Asia and Africa. Wild and domesticated trees currently coexist in the same geographic areas with important questions arising on their historical relationships. Little is known about the effects of th...

The recent sequencing of many Rosaceae complete genomes, including that of sweet cherry (Prunus avium L.), along with the availability of high-throughput resources offers new challenges and opportunities for cherry breeders in the genomic era towards improvement of climate-smart traits and diseases resistance against the main pathogens, which are c...

A selection of tomato ( Solanum lycopersicum L.) genotypes with diverse origin and breeding history including 33 landraces, eight modern varieties and two commercial hybrids has been characterized using a set of 25 qualitative descriptors and six quantitative traits. A wide range of variation was evident for the majority of traits, highlighting the...

In the main distribution area the genetic pattern of silver birch is dominated by two haplotypes: haplotype A located in the western and north-western Europe, and haplotype C in eastern and southeastern Europe, characterized by high levels of neutral genetic variability within populations, and low differentiation among populations. Information abou...

Sweet cherries, Prunus avium L. (Rosaceae), are gaining importance due to their perenniallity and nutritional attributes beneficial for human health. Interestingly, sweet cherry cultivars exhibit a wide range of phenotypic diversity in important agronomic traits, such as flowering time and defense reactions against pathogens. In this study, whole-g...

Tobacco is an economically important crop with leaves that are a significant source of aromatic, bioactive compounds such as phenolics and alkaloids. In the present study un- biased transcriptomics and metabolomics approaches were employed to identify and quantify individual changes in transcript and metabolite profiles in leaves of three oriental...

The Mediterranean hot-spot includes numerous endemic and socio-economically important plant species, seriously threatened by climate change and habitat loss. In this study, the genetic diversity of five populations of Cicer graecum, an endangered endemic species from Northern Peloponnese, Greece, wild relative of the cultivated Cicer arietinum, was...

Beans are one of the most important staple crops in the world. Runner bean (Phaseolus coccineus L.) is a small-scale agriculture crop compared to common bean (Phaseolous vulgaris). Beans have been introduced to Europe from the Central America to Europe and since then they have been scattered to different geographical regions. This has resulted in t...

Heat and calcium treatments are used to improve postharvest fruit longevity; however, the exact mechanism remains poorly understood. To characterize the impact of these treatments on sweet cherries metabolism, ‘Lapins’ fruits were treated with heat or CaCl2 solutions and their combination and subsequently were exposed at room temperature, for up to...

During the recent years, High Resolution Melting (HRM) analysis has been developed as a rapid and accurate tool in plant disease diagnostics, species identification and SNP genotyping. This approach has been applied to analyze the genetic diversity in several plant species with molecular markers, including single sequence repeats (SSR). However, no...

The recent sequencing of many Rosaceae complete genomes, including that of sweet cherry (Prunus avium L.), along with the availability of high-throughput resources offers new challenges and opportunities for cherry breeders in the genomic era towards improvement of climate-smart traits and diseases resistance against the main pathogens, which are c...

Α wide selection of tomato genotypes with diverse origin and breeding history (14 modern varieties, 71 landraces and 22 commercial hybrids) has been initially genotyped with a selection of highly informative simple sequence repeat (SSR) markers and two SCAR markers originally developed for resistance against two main fungal tomato diseases. Our dat...

Cucurbita pepo contains two cultivated subspecies each of which encompasses four fruit-shape morphotypes (cultivar-groups). The Pumpkin, Vegetable Marrow, Cocozelle, and Zucchini Groups are of subsp. pepo and the Acorn, Crookneck, Scallop, and Straightneck Groups are of subsp. ovifera. Recently, a de novo assembly of the C. pepo subsp. pepo Zucchin...

Livestock production in EU is highly depended on imported soybean exposing the livestock farming system to risks that related to global trade of soybean. Lupin species could be a realistic sustainable alternative source of protein for animal feeding. Lupinus is a very diverse genus with many species. However, only four of them namely L. albus, L. a...