Phenolic compounds (phenylpropanoids with an aromatic ring bearing one or more hydroxyl groups and various other substituents) are produced by plants as secondary metabolites, ranging from simple monomers to very large polymers. Due to their antioxidant activity they play crucial roles in plant defences against both biotic and abiotic stressors, moreover they are an important component of animal diet and they are highly beneficial for human health.

Phenolic compounds play important roles in plant defences against both biotic and abiotic stressors, and many in crop plants are highly beneficial for human health, but their quantities and profiles are influenced by numerous factors. Thus, the purpose of this study was to quantify free and glycosylated phenolic acids in apples (important sources of beneficial phenolics) in the course of fruit development, at harvest and during 5 months of storage.

Frequent duplications of the FLOWERING LOCUS T (FT) gene across various taxonomic lineages resulted in FT paralogs with floral repressor function, whereas others duplicates maintained their floral-promoting role. The FT gene has been confirmed as the inducer of photoperiodic flowering in most angiosperms analyzed to date.

Seed dormancy is an adaptive mechanism that allows seed germination under suitable environmental conditions. Germination of stored dormant seeds proceeds after dormancy breaking induced by stratification. To improve understanding of dormancy breaking in beechnuts, we: investigated effects of moisture content and temperature during storage; analysed contents of abscisic acid, abscisic acid metabolites and indole-3-acetic acid in embryonic axes during storage and stratification; and histochemically localized storage proteins.

The objective of this work was to induce and detect somaclonal variation in arracacha (Arracacia xanthorrhiza) plants regenerated via indirect morphogenesis, in order to evaluate the potential of this technique to produce new genotypes for breeding purposes of this crop.