Sprout suppression by ethylene during long-term storage of potato tubers

Abstract

Ethylene is one of the major plant hormones, which is also known as inhibitor of potato sprouting during storage.　Through the morphological analysis in tuber sprouts, we have investigated differences of cell shapes between in sprouts stored under ethylene and in sprouts stored under control condition, no-ethylene;in control sprouts, the cell shapes elongated vertically, longitudinal direction, whereas in ethylene-stored sprouts, those cell shapes expanded horizontally long, instead of elongating vertically.　These results suggest that ethylene suppresses longitudinal cell-elongation in potato sprouts during storage.　Among sugar metabolism related-enzymes, the gene expression of β-amylase increased in early stage of storage under ethylene, suggesting that this causes to increase of reducing sugars in potato tubers in the early stage of storage under ethylene.