Final Report Summary - MARCUS (Mobile Augmented Reality and Context in Urban Settings)
Project context and objectives
Warm summer temperatures can cause a lack of colouration to apple skins. Major apple-producing regions are located in warm areas of Southern European countries, such as the Ebro Valley (Northern Spain), Emilia Romagna (Italy), Midi Pyrenees and Languedoc-Roussillon (Southern France). Spain is the country where almost all the apple production is located in warm regions and this negatively affects the fruit quality obtained from economically significant cultivars such as Golden Delicious (lack of firmness) and bi-coloured cultivars such as Gala and Fuji (lack of skin colouration). The lack of adaptation to warm temperature has caused a dramatic decrease in apple production in Spain from 920 000 tonnes to 540 000 tonnes between 1985 and 2010. Poor-coloured fruit is perceived by the consumer as lacking quality. Consequently, the economic return to the fruit growers can be reduced by as much as 60 % compared to the premier class apples.
Apple skin colouration occurs during the last stages of fruit development; for early to mid-season cultivars this is during the late summer months in temperate regions. These months are particularly warm in some apple producing regions, such as Northern Spain, and these high temperatures cause a lack of red skin colouration. It is likely that this issue will increase due to global warming, i.e. be found in other apple producing regions in the world. As there is no sustainable horticultural solution to overcome this problem, one strategy is to develop new varieties that will develop a good red colour during warm summer temperatures. To achieve this, more in-depth physiological knowledge and genomics tools were required for a faster and more efficient breeding of new apple varieties with good red skin colour.
The scientific objective of the programme was therefore to establish the genetic and physiological bases of the regulation of red skin colour development on apples in high-temperature environments as a model case of economic exploitation of genomic knowledge. Having cultivars that can express high colour and quality even under the climatic conditions of warm environments is the most important and sustainable option for high quality apple production in these countries, thus increasing both the benefit to growers and apple consumption. On a more practical aspect, this project was a first example of the use of genomic technologies to understand a complex character and develop tools applicable for more efficient and faster breeding of new cultivars.
Work performed
We studied the physiological control of skin coloration by comparing skin colour of the same cultivars grown in different environments: New Zealand (cool summer) and Spain (warm summer). Red apple skin colouration is caused by anthocyanin pigments. We demonstrated that the concentration of anthocyanin in the apple skin is affected by warm summer temperature. This was confirmed by warming fruit in vivo in New Zealand. We made a complete inventory of the gene coding for the enzymes involved in the anthocyanin synthesis pathway, as well as the genes regulating these enzymes using the apple genome sequence. We paid special attention to regulatory genes as they are likely to respond to environmental conditions and then up- or down-regulate the enzymes that synthesise pigments. We studied the gene expression of such synthetic enzymes and regulatory genes in a range of cultivars with contrasting red skin colour patterns, as well as cultivars grown under warming (in NZ) and cooling (in Spain) conditions. Our results demonstrated the down-regulation of the anthocyanin biosynthetic and regulatory genes by warm temperature.
Apple genomics can help us to discover the genetic variants causing trait variation, such as reddening v. non-reddening. Our study on the response of skin colouration to warm temperature is a first example of how the apple genome can help understand a trait with significant economic issues. A draft genome sequence was developed and published by IASMA-FEM during the project (the genome sequence data was made available to the project researchers prior to its publication).
The apple genome sequence enabled the development of large sets of genetic markers to be tested on a genetic apple seedling population with contrasting phenotype for red skin coloration under warm summer temperatures. These genetic markers were then screened in an apple progeny segregating for skin colouration and then correlated with the phenotypic variation.
There is a variable response to warm temperature in different apple cultivars. Mutants of Gala have contrasting skin colour phenotypes. For example, Royal Gala and Galaxy apples are less coloured than Brookfield Gala under warm Spanish conditions, while all colour adequately in New Zealand. In fact, Brookfield Gala can be excessively coloured in the cooler growing regions of New Zealand.
We used genetic populations obtained from controlled crosses using red-skinned cultivars as parents. A segregation of skin colouration was observed in the progeny, with some seedlings showing an absence of skin coloration and other seedlings showing strong red colouration under warm temperature. The experiment was repeated over two years to verify our results. Skin colour was measured by visual assessment, colorimetry and anthocyanin pigment concentration across the population. This data was compared to a set of 300 genetic markers evenly distributed through the genome. This enabled us to construct a genetic map and identify genomic regions that are linked to the red colouration of the skin. The genomic region explaining most of the variability in skin colouration is at the base of chromosome 9, where a gene coding for a regulator of the anthocyanin biosynthesis pathway enzymes is located (MYB10). The association between a marker located close to MYB10 and skin colouration was confirmed in a wider set of apple germplasm.
In addition to being correlated with skin colour in a segregating apple progeny and in a set of apple breeding material, MYB10 expression is also affected by heating fruit in NZ and under controlled hot conditions in Spain, while it is more highly expressed concomitant with the appearance of pigments under cooled conditions and unheated conditions in NZ. This strongly suggests a major involvement of MYB10 in the determination of apple skin colouration.
Main results
Our results have enabled us to develop a better understanding of the response of apple skin to warm temperatures. Genetic markers linked to red skin colouration in apple have been identified, including markers located close to MYB10, a gene controlling the anthocyanin synthesis pathway and responding to warm temperature. It is likely that allelic variants of MYB10 are less sensitive to warm temperature. Such alleles can be selected for in-breeding populations to enable the selection of apple seedlings that are resistant to warm summer temperature producing red colour on the skin. A genetic marker derived from MYB10 must be developed and tested on breeding populations to validate its efficiency as a tool for faster breeding using marker-assisted selection.
After further development, the information obtained here could be a useful tool for breeders to improve the efficiency of breeding programmes focusing on the development of new apple cultivars with a high potential of fruit colour development, even in warm and hot climates that are typical of Mediterranean areas.
Project coordinator:
Dr Ignasi Iglesias
Contact e-mail:
ignasi.iglesias@irta.cat
Project website:
:http://www.irta.cat how mobile augmented reality and context aware applications can be used to enhance the urban experience. Scientific Impacts MARCUS research collaborations facilitated by the travel support through the Marie Curie IRSES scheme led to a number of themes that were investigated during the project, and which will be carried forward after the project. Generally spoken, the themes of the researchers individual secondments can be clustered as: IPCity-related work, AR Navigation, Crowd-based content creation for AR, Framework engineering, and Earthquake AR. IPCity was an EC-funded integrated project that was centered around interaction and presence in urban environments. All European partners of MARCUS were partners of IPCity, as well as the HITLab NZ. Due to the obvious common research interests in EU and NZ, members of the consortium initiated the MARCUS proposal to allow for face-to-face collaboration. Naturally, a number of secondments were concerned with direct IPCity-related topics. These included work on the interaction prototyping editor and on the MapLens and Time Warp trials, as well as joint work on the IPCity summer school for students. The work on the Time Warp trials was later published in a book-chapter in the Springer Handbook on Augmented Reality. Pedestrian navigation using Augmented Reality was considered as a challenging research topic within the MARCUS Project and several research activities were conducted within that scope. This line of work led to a publications at Mobile HCI and Graphics Interfaces conferences, as well in a book-chapter, again in the Springer Handbook on Augmented Reality. Work themed around crowd-based mobile content creation for AR led to two papers, a book-chapter in the prestigious Dagstuhl proceedings, and a jointly organized workshop on authoring solutions for Augmented Reality which was collocated with the International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR). Much of the software developed alongside this project is aimed for mobile devices, and especially for the Android OS. A number of secondments thus specifically dealt with low-level framework engineering tasks such as feature tracking and rendering. One example of such collaboration is the integration of Aaltos mobile rendering engine mLoma, which is esp. Well suited for large models that do not fit into the physical memory of a device, with the HIT Lab NZs CityViewAR application (a.k.a. Earthquake AR). Earthquake AR work was triggered by the unfortunate series of disastrous Christchurch earthquakes during the project period. Researchers at our partner HIT Lab NZ (Christchurch) and their current exchange visitors thought about how the technology developed by the different partners could be applied to such contexts. This bore the idea of visualizing the past, present, and future of buildings on a time-line and also on location using mobile AR. In light of these disastrous events to the city of Christchurch, parts of the MARCUS research swiftly changed to investigate how Mobile Augmented Reality could be used to support people in this context. The HIT Lab NZ and its affiliates sourced and generated 3D models of many of the citys destroyed buildings. The city model-data was used to provide immersive visualization in a multi-screen cave at the lab using an earth browser so that one could experience the city in its former state in life-size, and also how particular buildings might look like after a rebuilt according to the current state of planning. Moreover, the technology that was been developed by MARCUS researchers throughout the course of the project has been used to visualize those models on mobile phones on location. Societal Impacts The Earthquake AR software was featured on New Zealand national television , presented by our partner Mark BiIlinghurst and Christchurch architect Jason Mills. Earthquake AR received funding from Vodafone and was renamed into CityViewAR. The concept was extended to also include user generated content and community feedback options. There are over a thousand stories people have submitted about their experience in the earthquake, which can also appear as virtual tags overlaid on the real world. So people walking through the city can learn about the survivors experiences in the locations it happened. The CityViewAR application has been made available on the Android Market and has currently been downloaded nearly 1,000 times. Besides this concrete example, knowledge transfer happened at a number of levels including between professors, researchers and students. This took place in specific MARCUS workshops and also during the exchanges, including some courses being taught by visiting researchers. These collaborations have already born results which are likely to continue beyond the life of MARCUS. Future collaborations will be concerned about the above mentioned topics. Moreover, the partners identified a common interest in working with middleware for embedded devices to support an audio augmention of the environment. Economic Impacts Mixed and augmented realities are becoming increasingly interesting to industry, either from the perspective of exploiting research results within spin-out companies or when specific results or new ideas are developed in partnership with industrial customers. Examples being the above mentioned CityViewAR applications which was sponsored by Vodafone, or a campaign for Mc Donalds India for promoting an ice-cream (http://www.imlovingit.in/instore.html(opens in new window)). From the outset the project also worked extensively with technology-transfer agencies, for example NZi3, who see location-aware technologies as a major driving factor for growth within New Zealand over the coming years. Mixed reality technologies are also recognised as being beneficial within urban planning scenarios. In addition to the above mentioned Earthquake AR, work by University of Otago in this area has already indicated there is potential for future collaboration within industry in this area and Boffa Miskel, a leading New Zealand based planning agency, have already had extensive contacts with the project consortium.
Warm summer temperatures can cause a lack of colouration to apple skins. Major apple-producing regions are located in warm areas of Southern European countries, such as the Ebro Valley (Northern Spain), Emilia Romagna (Italy), Midi Pyrenees and Languedoc-Roussillon (Southern France). Spain is the country where almost all the apple production is located in warm regions and this negatively affects the fruit quality obtained from economically significant cultivars such as Golden Delicious (lack of firmness) and bi-coloured cultivars such as Gala and Fuji (lack of skin colouration). The lack of adaptation to warm temperature has caused a dramatic decrease in apple production in Spain from 920 000 tonnes to 540 000 tonnes between 1985 and 2010. Poor-coloured fruit is perceived by the consumer as lacking quality. Consequently, the economic return to the fruit growers can be reduced by as much as 60 % compared to the premier class apples.
Apple skin colouration occurs during the last stages of fruit development; for early to mid-season cultivars this is during the late summer months in temperate regions. These months are particularly warm in some apple producing regions, such as Northern Spain, and these high temperatures cause a lack of red skin colouration. It is likely that this issue will increase due to global warming, i.e. be found in other apple producing regions in the world. As there is no sustainable horticultural solution to overcome this problem, one strategy is to develop new varieties that will develop a good red colour during warm summer temperatures. To achieve this, more in-depth physiological knowledge and genomics tools were required for a faster and more efficient breeding of new apple varieties with good red skin colour.
The scientific objective of the programme was therefore to establish the genetic and physiological bases of the regulation of red skin colour development on apples in high-temperature environments as a model case of economic exploitation of genomic knowledge. Having cultivars that can express high colour and quality even under the climatic conditions of warm environments is the most important and sustainable option for high quality apple production in these countries, thus increasing both the benefit to growers and apple consumption. On a more practical aspect, this project was a first example of the use of genomic technologies to understand a complex character and develop tools applicable for more efficient and faster breeding of new cultivars.
Work performed
We studied the physiological control of skin coloration by comparing skin colour of the same cultivars grown in different environments: New Zealand (cool summer) and Spain (warm summer). Red apple skin colouration is caused by anthocyanin pigments. We demonstrated that the concentration of anthocyanin in the apple skin is affected by warm summer temperature. This was confirmed by warming fruit in vivo in New Zealand. We made a complete inventory of the gene coding for the enzymes involved in the anthocyanin synthesis pathway, as well as the genes regulating these enzymes using the apple genome sequence. We paid special attention to regulatory genes as they are likely to respond to environmental conditions and then up- or down-regulate the enzymes that synthesise pigments. We studied the gene expression of such synthetic enzymes and regulatory genes in a range of cultivars with contrasting red skin colour patterns, as well as cultivars grown under warming (in NZ) and cooling (in Spain) conditions. Our results demonstrated the down-regulation of the anthocyanin biosynthetic and regulatory genes by warm temperature.
Apple genomics can help us to discover the genetic variants causing trait variation, such as reddening v. non-reddening. Our study on the response of skin colouration to warm temperature is a first example of how the apple genome can help understand a trait with significant economic issues. A draft genome sequence was developed and published by IASMA-FEM during the project (the genome sequence data was made available to the project researchers prior to its publication).
The apple genome sequence enabled the development of large sets of genetic markers to be tested on a genetic apple seedling population with contrasting phenotype for red skin coloration under warm summer temperatures. These genetic markers were then screened in an apple progeny segregating for skin colouration and then correlated with the phenotypic variation.
There is a variable response to warm temperature in different apple cultivars. Mutants of Gala have contrasting skin colour phenotypes. For example, Royal Gala and Galaxy apples are less coloured than Brookfield Gala under warm Spanish conditions, while all colour adequately in New Zealand. In fact, Brookfield Gala can be excessively coloured in the cooler growing regions of New Zealand.
We used genetic populations obtained from controlled crosses using red-skinned cultivars as parents. A segregation of skin colouration was observed in the progeny, with some seedlings showing an absence of skin coloration and other seedlings showing strong red colouration under warm temperature. The experiment was repeated over two years to verify our results. Skin colour was measured by visual assessment, colorimetry and anthocyanin pigment concentration across the population. This data was compared to a set of 300 genetic markers evenly distributed through the genome. This enabled us to construct a genetic map and identify genomic regions that are linked to the red colouration of the skin. The genomic region explaining most of the variability in skin colouration is at the base of chromosome 9, where a gene coding for a regulator of the anthocyanin biosynthesis pathway enzymes is located (MYB10). The association between a marker located close to MYB10 and skin colouration was confirmed in a wider set of apple germplasm.
In addition to being correlated with skin colour in a segregating apple progeny and in a set of apple breeding material, MYB10 expression is also affected by heating fruit in NZ and under controlled hot conditions in Spain, while it is more highly expressed concomitant with the appearance of pigments under cooled conditions and unheated conditions in NZ. This strongly suggests a major involvement of MYB10 in the determination of apple skin colouration.
Main results
Our results have enabled us to develop a better understanding of the response of apple skin to warm temperatures. Genetic markers linked to red skin colouration in apple have been identified, including markers located close to MYB10, a gene controlling the anthocyanin synthesis pathway and responding to warm temperature. It is likely that allelic variants of MYB10 are less sensitive to warm temperature. Such alleles can be selected for in-breeding populations to enable the selection of apple seedlings that are resistant to warm summer temperature producing red colour on the skin. A genetic marker derived from MYB10 must be developed and tested on breeding populations to validate its efficiency as a tool for faster breeding using marker-assisted selection.
After further development, the information obtained here could be a useful tool for breeders to improve the efficiency of breeding programmes focusing on the development of new apple cultivars with a high potential of fruit colour development, even in warm and hot climates that are typical of Mediterranean areas.
Project coordinator:
Dr Ignasi Iglesias
Contact e-mail:
ignasi.iglesias@irta.cat
Project website:
:http://www.irta.cat how mobile augmented reality and context aware applications can be used to enhance the urban experience. Scientific Impacts MARCUS research collaborations facilitated by the travel support through the Marie Curie IRSES scheme led to a number of themes that were investigated during the project, and which will be carried forward after the project. Generally spoken, the themes of the researchers individual secondments can be clustered as: IPCity-related work, AR Navigation, Crowd-based content creation for AR, Framework engineering, and Earthquake AR. IPCity was an EC-funded integrated project that was centered around interaction and presence in urban environments. All European partners of MARCUS were partners of IPCity, as well as the HITLab NZ. Due to the obvious common research interests in EU and NZ, members of the consortium initiated the MARCUS proposal to allow for face-to-face collaboration. Naturally, a number of secondments were concerned with direct IPCity-related topics. These included work on the interaction prototyping editor and on the MapLens and Time Warp trials, as well as joint work on the IPCity summer school for students. The work on the Time Warp trials was later published in a book-chapter in the Springer Handbook on Augmented Reality. Pedestrian navigation using Augmented Reality was considered as a challenging research topic within the MARCUS Project and several research activities were conducted within that scope. This line of work led to a publications at Mobile HCI and Graphics Interfaces conferences, as well in a book-chapter, again in the Springer Handbook on Augmented Reality. Work themed around crowd-based mobile content creation for AR led to two papers, a book-chapter in the prestigious Dagstuhl proceedings, and a jointly organized workshop on authoring solutions for Augmented Reality which was collocated with the International Symposium on Mixed and Augmented Reality (ISMAR). Much of the software developed alongside this project is aimed for mobile devices, and especially for the Android OS. A number of secondments thus specifically dealt with low-level framework engineering tasks such as feature tracking and rendering. One example of such collaboration is the integration of Aaltos mobile rendering engine mLoma, which is esp. Well suited for large models that do not fit into the physical memory of a device, with the HIT Lab NZs CityViewAR application (a.k.a. Earthquake AR). Earthquake AR work was triggered by the unfortunate series of disastrous Christchurch earthquakes during the project period. Researchers at our partner HIT Lab NZ (Christchurch) and their current exchange visitors thought about how the technology developed by the different partners could be applied to such contexts. This bore the idea of visualizing the past, present, and future of buildings on a time-line and also on location using mobile AR. In light of these disastrous events to the city of Christchurch, parts of the MARCUS research swiftly changed to investigate how Mobile Augmented Reality could be used to support people in this context. The HIT Lab NZ and its affiliates sourced and generated 3D models of many of the citys destroyed buildings. The city model-data was used to provide immersive visualization in a multi-screen cave at the lab using an earth browser so that one could experience the city in its former state in life-size, and also how particular buildings might look like after a rebuilt according to the current state of planning. Moreover, the technology that was been developed by MARCUS researchers throughout the course of the project has been used to visualize those models on mobile phones on location. Societal Impacts The Earthquake AR software was featured on New Zealand national television , presented by our partner Mark BiIlinghurst and Christchurch architect Jason Mills. Earthquake AR received funding from Vodafone and was renamed into CityViewAR. The concept was extended to also include user generated content and community feedback options. There are over a thousand stories people have submitted about their experience in the earthquake, which can also appear as virtual tags overlaid on the real world. So people walking through the city can learn about the survivors experiences in the locations it happened. The CityViewAR application has been made available on the Android Market and has currently been downloaded nearly 1,000 times. Besides this concrete example, knowledge transfer happened at a number of levels including between professors, researchers and students. This took place in specific MARCUS workshops and also during the exchanges, including some courses being taught by visiting researchers. These collaborations have already born results which are likely to continue beyond the life of MARCUS. Future collaborations will be concerned about the above mentioned topics. Moreover, the partners identified a common interest in working with middleware for embedded devices to support an audio augmention of the environment. Economic Impacts Mixed and augmented realities are becoming increasingly interesting to industry, either from the perspective of exploiting research results within spin-out companies or when specific results or new ideas are developed in partnership with industrial customers. Examples being the above mentioned CityViewAR applications which was sponsored by Vodafone, or a campaign for Mc Donalds India for promoting an ice-cream (http://www.imlovingit.in/instore.html(opens in new window)). From the outset the project also worked extensively with technology-transfer agencies, for example NZi3, who see location-aware technologies as a major driving factor for growth within New Zealand over the coming years. Mixed reality technologies are also recognised as being beneficial within urban planning scenarios. In addition to the above mentioned Earthquake AR, work by University of Otago in this area has already indicated there is potential for future collaboration within industry in this area and Boffa Miskel, a leading New Zealand based planning agency, have already had extensive contacts with the project consortium.