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We established a step-by-step, experiment-guided metabolomics procedure, based on LC-ESI-MS analysis, to generate a detailed picture of the changing metabolic profiles during late berry development in the important Italian grapevine cultivar Corvina. We sampled berries from four developmental time points and three post-harvest time points during the withering process, and used chromatograms of methanolic extracts to test the performance of the MetAlign and MZmine data mining programs. MZmine achieved a better resolution and therefore generated a more useful data matrix. Then both the quantitative performance of the analytical platform and the matrix effect were assessed, and the final dataset was investigated by multivariate data analysis. Our analysis confirmed the results of previous studies but also revealed some novel findings, including the prevalence of two specific flavonoids in unripe berries and important differences between the developmental profiles of flavones and flavanones, suggesting that specific individual metabolites could have different functions, and that flavones and flavanones probably play quite distinct biological roles. Moreover, the hypothesis-free multivariate analysis of subsets of the wide data matrix evidentiated the relationships between the various classes of metabolites, such as those between anthocyanins and hydroxycinnamic acids and between flavan-3-ols and anthocyanins.

Natural remedies, such as those based on traditional Chinese medicines, have become more popular also in western countries over the last 10 years. The composition of these herbal products is largely unknown and difficult to determine. Moreover, since plants respond to their environment changing the metabolome, the composition of plant material can vary depending on the plant growth conditions.However, there is a growing need of a deeper knowledge on such natural remedies also in view of the growing number of reports of toxicity following the consumption of herbal supplements. Untargeted metabolomics is a useful approach for the simultaneous analysis of many compounds in herbal products. In particular, liquid chromatography/mass spectrometry (LC-MS) can determine presence, amount and sometime structures of plant metabolites in complex herbal mixtures, with significant advantages over techniques such as nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and gas chromatography/mass spectrometry (GC-MS).

Botanical fruits derive from ovaries and their most important function is to favor seed dispersal. Fleshy fruits do so by attracting frugivorous animals that disperse seeds together with their own excrements (endozoochory). Gymnosperms make seeds but have no ovaries to be transformed into fruits. Many species surround their seeds with fleshy structures and use endozoochory to disperse them. Such structures are functionally fruits and can derive from different anatomical parts. Ginkgo biloba and Taxus baccata fruit-like structures differ in their anatomical origin since the outer seed integument becomes fleshy in Ginkgo, whereas in Taxus, the fleshy aril is formed de novo. The ripening characteristics are different, with Ginkgo more rudimentary and Taxus more similar to angiosperm fruits. MADS-box genes are known to be necessary for the formation of flowers and fruits in Angiosperms but also for making both male and female reproductive structures in Gymnosperms. Here, a series of different MADS-box genes have been shown for the first time to be involved also in the formation of gymnosperm fruit-like structures. Apparently, the same gene types have been recruited in phylogenetically distant species to make fleshy structures that also have different anatomical origins. This finding indicates that the main molecular networks operating in the development of fleshy fruits have independently appeared in distantly related Gymnosperm taxa. Hence, the appearance of the seed habit and the accompanying necessity of seed dispersal has led to the invention of the fruit habit that thus seems to have appeared independently of the presence of flowers.