High Temperature and Humidity Affect Pollen Viability and Longevity in Olea europaea L.

Olea europaea L. is a crop typical of the Mediterranean area that has an important role in economy, society, and culture of this region. Climate change is expected to have significant impact on this crop, which is typically adapted to certain pedo-climatic characteristics of restricted geographic areas. In this scenario, the aim of this study was to evaluate the time-course response of pollen viability to different combinations of temperature and humidity. The study was performed comparing flowering time and pollen functionality of O. europaea from twelve cultivars growing at the same site belonging to the Campania olive collection in Italy. Pollen was incubated at 12 °C, 22 °C, and 36 °C in combination with 50% RH or 100% RH treatments for 5 days. The results highlighted that a drastic loss of pollen viability occurs when pollen is subjected to a combination of high humidity and high temperature, whereas 50% RH had less impact on pollen thermotolerance, because most cultivars preserved a high pollen viability over time. In the ongoing climate change scenario, it is critical to assess the effect of increasing temperatures on sensitive reproductive traits such as pollen viability to predict possible reduction in crop yield. Moreover, the results highlighted that the effect of temperature increase on pollen thermotolerance should be evaluated in combination with other environmental factors such as humidity conditions. The screening of olive cultivars based on pollen thermotolerance is critical in the ongoing climate change scenario, especially considering that the economic value of this species relies on successful fertilization and embryo development, and also that production cycle of Olea europaea can be longer than a hundred years.

Fraudes em azeite de oliva

O azeite de oliva é um produto originado a partir das azeitonas que são frutos da oliveira Olea europaea L. O seu consumo vem aumentando constantemente, tornando o Brasil um dos maiores importadores mundiais de azeite de oliva, sendo que esta não é uma produção típica do país. Em consequência do alto consumo do azeite de oliva e ao seu alto custo no mercado, esse produto tornou-se um dos alimentos mais fraudados. No Brasil, a adulteração mais comum é a adição de outros óleos comestíveis mais baratos, isso pode ser observado, em sua maioria, em produtos importados (informação da rotulagem) e envasados no país. Este trabalho teve como objetivo realizar uma revisão sobre fraude em azeite de oliva. Há uma grande incidência de fraude em azeite de oliva, e a forma mais comum é através da adição de outros óleos vegetais, entre eles o óleo de soja. Deste modo, o monitoramento deve ser constante para assegurar a qualidade do produto para os consumidores.

An In Vitro and In Silico Study of the Enhanced Antiproliferative and Pro-Oxidant Potential of Olea europaea L. cv. Arbosana Leaf Extract via Elastic Nanovesicles (Spanlastics)

The olive tree is a venerable Mediterranean plant and often used in traditional medicine. The main aim of the present study was to evaluate the effect of Olea europaea L. cv. Arbosana leaf extract (OLE) and its encapsulation within a spanlastic dosage form on the improvement of its pro-oxidant and antiproliferative activity against HepG-2, MCF-7, and Caco-2 human cancer cell lines. The LC-HRESIMS-assisted metabolomic profile of OLE putatively annotated 20 major metabolites and showed considerable in vitro antiproliferative activity against HepG-2, MCF-7, and Caco-2 cell lines with IC50 values of 9.2 ± 0.8, 7.1 ± 0.9, and 6.5 ± 0.7 µg/mL, respectively. The encapsulation of OLE within a (spanlastic) nanocarrier system, using a spraying method and Span 40 and Tween 80 (4:1 molar ratio), was successfully carried out (size 41 ± 2.4 nm, zeta potential 13.6 ± 2.5, and EE 61.43 ± 2.03%). OLE showed enhanced thermal stability, and an improved in vitro antiproliferative effect against HepG-2, MCF-7, and Caco-2 (IC50 3.6 ± 0.2, 2.3 ± 0.1, and 1.8 ± 0.1 µg/mL, respectively) in comparison to the unprocessed extract. Both preparations were found to exhibit pro-oxidant potential inside the cancer cells, through the potential inhibitory activity of OLE against glutathione reductase and superoxide dismutase (IC50 1.18 ± 0.12 and 2.33 ± 0.19 µg/mL, respectively). These inhibitory activities were proposed via a comprehensive in silico study to be linked to the presence of certain compounds in OLE. Consequently, we assume that formulating such a herbal extract within a suitable nanocarrier would be a promising improvement of its therapeutic potential.

Comparative Analysis of Genotyping by Sequencing and Whole-Genome Sequencing Methods in Diversity Studies of Olea europaea L.

Olive, Olea europaea L., is a tree of great economic and cultural importance in the Mediterranean basin. Thousands of cultivars have been described, of which around 1200 are conserved in the different olive germplasm banks. The genetic characterisation of these cultivars can be performed in different ways. Whole-genome sequencing (WGS) provides more information than the reduced representation methods such as genotype by sequencing (GBS), but at a much higher cost. This may change as the cost of sequencing continues to drop, but, currently, genotyping hundreds of cultivars using WGS is not a realistic goal for most research groups. Our aim is to systematically compare both methodologies applied to olive genotyping and summarise any possible recommendations for the geneticists and molecular breeders of the olive scientific community. In this work, we used a selection of 24 cultivars from an olive core collection from the World Olive Germplasm Collection of the Andalusian Institute of Agricultural and Fisheries Research and Training (WOGBC), which represent the most of the cultivars present in cultivated fields over the world. Our results show that both methodologies deliver similar results in the context of phylogenetic analysis and popular population genetic analysis methods such as clustering. Furthermore, WGS and GBS datasets from different experiments can be merged in a single dataset to perform these analytical methodologies with proper filtering. We also tested the influence of the different olive reference genomes in this type of analysis, finding that they have almost no effect when estimating genetic relationships. This work represents the first comparative study between both sequencing techniques in olive. Our results demonstrate that the use of GBS is a perfectly viable option for replacing WGS and reducing research costs when the goal of the experiment is to characterise the genetic relationship between different accessions. Besides this, we show that it is possible to combine variants from GBS and WGS datasets, allowing the reuse of publicly available data.