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This report presents the process and outcomes of building a Knowledge Transfer (KT) for the CEE2ACT project. The KT strategy contributes to the overall aim of the Project to empower Central and Eastern European Countries within the European Union to develop circular bioeconomy roadmaps via a bottom-up governance model and the building of national bioeconomy hubs in 10 CEE countries and beyond

Exploiting wild relatives of S. lycopersicum for quality traitsAna Marcela Víquez ZamoraTomatoes are consumed worldwide and became a model for crop plant research. A part of the research aims at expanding genetic diversity in tomato; this can be done by incorporating useful genes found in wild germplasm. In this thesis we focused on exploring the variation between commercial tomatoes and accessions of wild relatives. Especially, we focused on the species Solanum pimpinellifolium. We explored the genome and the metabolome of accessions of S. pimpinellifolium and several varieties of S. lycopersicum. Finally a crossing population between the species was genetically analyzed. Clear differences were identified. We found genome regions related to differences between round and cherry tomatoes, TYLCV resistance, flavour and the phenylpropanoid pathway. S. pimpinellifolium certainly harbours useful genetic variability that can be (re-) introduced in tomato. Our results give an insight in the physical positions of metabolite related QTLs that can be used by breeders to exploit S. pimpinellifolium to improve tomato quality.

Untargeted LCMS profiling of semi-polar metabolites followed by metabolite quantitative trait locus (mQTL) analysis was performed in ripe pepper fruits of 113 F2 plants derived from a cross between Capsicum annuum AC1979 (no. 19) and Capsicum chinense No. 4661 Selection (no. 18). The parental accessions were selected based on their variation in fruit morphological characteristics and fruit content of some target phytonutrients. Clear segregation of fruit colour and fruit metabolite profiles was observed in the F2 population. The F2 plants formed three clusters based on their metabolite profiles. Of the total of 542 metabolites, 52 could be annotated, including a range of flavonoids, such as flavone C-glycosides, flavonol O-glycosides and naringenin chalcone, as well as several phenylpropanoids, a capsaicin analogue, fatty acid derivatives and amino acid derivatives. Interval mapping revealed 279 mQTLs in total. Two mQTL hotspots were found on chromosome 9. These two chromosomal regions regulated the relative levels of 35 and 103 metabolites, respectively. Analysis also revealed an mQTL for a capsaicin analogue, located on chromosome 7. Confirmation of flavonoid mQTLs using a set of six flavonoid candidate gene markers and their corresponding expression data (expression QTLs) indicated the Ca-MYB12 transcription factor gene on chromosome 1 and the gene encoding flavone synthase (FS-2) on chromosome 6 as likely causative genes determining the variation in naringenin chalcone and flavone C-glycosides, respectively, in this population. The combination of large-scale metabolite profiling and QTL analysis provided valuable insight into the genomic regions and genes important for the production of (secondary) metabolites in pepper fruit. This will impact breeding strategies aimed at optimising the content of specific metabolites in pepper fruit