Vaccinium as a comparative system for understanding of complex flavonoid accumulation profiles and regulation in fruit.

The genus Vaccinium L. (Ericaceae) contains premium berryfruit crops including blueberry, cranberry, bilberry and lingonberry. Consumption of Vaccinium berries is strongly associated with various potential health and many of these benefits are attributed to the relatively high concentrations of flavonoids, including the anthocyanins that provide the attractive red and blue berry colours. Since these phytochemicals are increasingly appealing to consumers, they have become a crop breeding target. There has been substantial recent progress in Vaccinium genomics and genetics together with new functional data on the transcriptional regulation of flavonoids. This is helping to unravel the developmental control of flavonoids and to identify genetic regions and genes that can be selected for, to further improve Vaccinium crops, and advance our understanding of flavonoid regulation and biosynthesis across a broader range of fruit crops. In this update we consider the recent progress in understanding flavonoid regulation in fruit crops, using Vaccinium as an example, and highlighting the significant gains in both genomic tools and functional analysis.