La nettarina ‘Big Top’: un caso di studio

‘Big Top’ nectarine has peculiar fruit traits such as early and extensive anthocyanins accumulation in skin, crunchy flesh, very slow melting phase and low acid flavour, which makes the fruit edible when still relatively immature. However, due to flesh melting at a late stage of fruit ripening and to the high ethylene metabolism it could be classifed as a ‘melting’ type fruit. The slow pace in fruit melting seems to be inherited as a single dominant trait, although it can be phenotyped on tree only by sensory evaluation and after several observations. Early investigations on the possible variability of the endo poligalatturonase gene have shown interesting result in term of SNPs, although further works are requested in order to find molecular markers able to uniquely identify this peculiar flesh phenotype.