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Biology of Floral Scent Volatiles in Ornamental Plants

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Floriculture and Ornamental Plants

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Abstract

Floral scent has fascinated humans since antiquity and since then played a major aesthetic and commercial role in our lives. Yet, the principal function of the plethora of volatile compounds is to promote ecological interactions between flowers and their specific pollinators. Floral fragrance is composed of low molecular weight volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and derived from the terpenoid, phenylpropanoid/benzenoid, and fatty acid biosynthetic pathways. These pathways are regulated by a network of complex endogenous and external factors that generate a fine-tuned temporal emission of floral scent. They are produced in different subcellular compartments of the floral tissue and rely on primary metabolic pathways for the supply of precursors for their biosynthesis. Recent advances in instrumentation, in association with our current ability to isolate and characterize genes and the enzymes they encode, have greatly improved our understanding of how plants synthesize and regulate the production of these specialized compounds. In this chapter, we provide an overview of the complex biological mechanisms governing the biogenesis of scent in flowers.

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Acknowledgment

Research work on floral scent biology in the authors’ laboratory was supported by research grants from the Science and Engineering Research Board (www.serb.gov.in), India [EMR/2015/000247/PS], Department of Science and Technology, Government of India [DST/INT/RUS/RFBR/P-329] and by the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (www.csirhrdg.res.in), India [38(1336)/12/EMR-II and 38(1420)/16/EMR-II]. U Ghissing was a recipient of an individual research fellowship [09/081(1291)/2017-EMR-I] from CSIR.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Natural Product Biotechnology Group, Agricultural and Food Engineering Department, Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, Kharagpur, West Bengal, India

    Upashana Ghissing & Adinpunya Mitra

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  1. Upashana Ghissing
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  2. Adinpunya Mitra
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Correspondence to Adinpunya Mitra .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Floriculture Division CSIR-National Botanical Research Institute, Lucknow, India

    S. K. Datta

  2. Department of Floriculture and Landscape Architecture, Y.S. Parmer University of Horticulture and Forestry, Solan, HP, India

    Youdh Chand Gupta

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Ghissing, U., Mitra, A. (2022). Biology of Floral Scent Volatiles in Ornamental Plants. In: Datta, S.K., Gupta, Y.C. (eds) Floriculture and Ornamental Plants. Handbooks of Crop Diversity: Conservation and Use of Plant Genetic Resources. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-15-3518-5_27

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