The development and breeding practice of molecular markers for peach skin blush

Abstract Peach is an economically important fruit tree crop worldwide. The external color of fruit impairs peach price, especially fruits with different degrees blush. Developing varied skin color cultivars by molecular breeding is expected to satisfy the market demands for diverse peach fruits. Although, the variations in key genes regarding whether the skin is colored have been found, their markers have not really been widely used in the breeding process, and the molecular marker development of peach skin blush awaits promotion and application. The goal of this study was to explore the variations related to peach skin color, and to develop molecular markers for breeding based on variations. By analyzing the expression of anthocyanin synthesis-related and regulatory genes, we confirmed that the MYB10.1 is a key gene control skin color. We further found that 5243 bp insertion and 483 bp deletion in MYB10.1 promoter were closely related to peach skin color phenotype. In addition, we identified one transposon insertion mutation at the − 2706 bp position of MYB10.1 promoter related to non-red fruit skin trait and developed a marker for validation. The size of the insertion amplified from the ShiYuBaiTao genome DNA was approximately 3.5 kb. However, it does not completely explain the phenomenon of non-red skin of peach just as MYB10.1-2/MYB10.1-2 and accuracy were 36.1% in this study. Based on the results of this work, we propose that MYB10.1-2/MYB10.1-2 should not only be a genotype of non-red skin, but also should be combined with other makers to predict the color of peach skin color.