Spatio-temporal distribution and natural variation of metabolites in citrus fruits

To study the natural variation and spatio-temporal accumulation of citrus metabolites, liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC–MS) based metabolome analysis was performed on four fruit tissues (flavedo, albedo, segment membrane and juice sacs) and different Citrus species (lemon, pummelo and grapefruit, sweet orange and mandarin). Using a non-targeted metabolomics approach, more than 2000 metabolite signals were detected, from which more than 54 metabolites, including amino acids, flavonoids and limonoids, were identified/annotated. Differential accumulation patterns of both primary metabolites and secondary metabolites in various tissues and species were revealed by our study. Further investigation indicated that flavedo accumulates more flavonoids while juice sacs contain more amino acids. Besides this, cluster analysis based on the levels of metabolites detected in 47 individual Citrus accessions clearly grouped them into four distinct clusters: pummelos and grapefruits, lemons, sweet oranges and mandarins, while the cluster of pummelos and grapefruits lay distinctly apart from the other three species.