INVESTIGATORY PROJECT REPORT -AISSCE- 2022-23

SUBJECT: BIOLOGY (044)

TOPIC: FROST RESISTANT STRAWBERRIES

SUBMITTED BY SUBMITTED TO
NAME: MOHAMMED JUNAID YAYATI JOSHI
CLASS: XII D
ROLL NO:
 Session- 2022-23
CERTIFICATE

This is to certify that Mohammed Junaid bearing the

roll number _________ of class 12th D has successfully
completed his Biology project work on the topic Frost
Resistant Strawberries under the guidance of Ms.
Yayati Joshi during the session of 2022-23 for partial
fulfilment of the requirement of the Biology (044)
practical curriculum in AISSCE.

Int. Examiner No……… Ext. Examiner No. ………

Signature……………… Signature……………….

Principal’s Signature School Stamp

 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

First and foremost, I would like to express my sincere

gratitude to my biology teacher, Ms Yayati Joshi (name of the
subject teacher), for the valuable guidance and supervision
provided throughout the completion of the research work and
project compilation.

I would also like to thank the honourable Principal Mr Ajay K

Sharma for his constant motivation and guidance throughout.

A special word of gratitude for my parents and friends who

contributed in their own significant ways in the successful
completion and submission of the project work.
 INDEX

 Introduction

 Experimentation

 Procedure And Observation

 Result

 Bibliography
 FROST RESISTANT
STRAWBERRIES

 INTRODUCTION
The strawberry is a major berry crop around the world. Since
years researchers and scientists have tried to optimize the
production of strawberries so that the berry could reach its
maximum potential in aspects such as the yield, fruit size and
quality traits, such as colour and taste.
“However, the narrow genetic base of the cultivated
traditional strawberry, combined with the polyploid nature of
the crop constrains breeding methods.”
With those obstacles in mind, scientists in biotechnological
fields have taken the path that leads through gene
engineering. And the results prove this way to be an efficient
alternative strategy to accomplish strawberry improvement.
One significant problem in the production of strawberries is
the frost damage. The producing of strawberries happens
best in temperate climate. This however limits the time in
which strawberries can be cropped and harvested.
Most strawberry crops begin in spring, however early spring
frost damages the flowers leading to poor yields and erratic
fruiting. Additionally, strawberries are soft and fragile
products and furthermore they have a very short shelf life. To
cope with these rather negative traits the strawberry fruit
must be stored at low temperatures for an extended shelf life
but at freezing temperature, ice crystals can significantly
damage the strawberry.
Thus, scientists were looking for methods and techniques
regarding the protection of strawberries against frost. Prior
to this research the properties of antifreeze proteins have
known to be 3 efficient in the field of frost resistance, as the
name already suggests. This protein seemed to be a potential
candidate for the frost-resistant factor in strawberries.
Hitherto, the antifreeze protein of arctic fish was
experimented with and its expression in the strawberry fruit
turned out to be successful.
EXPERIMENTATION

As we now know, the transfer of genes encoding antifreeze

proteins from Antarctic fish is one means of increasing frost
resistance. But before we go into detail on how this exactly
takes place, we’ll briefly explain some background genetic
information of the correlation of the strawberry and the
antifreeze protein:

Applying approaches based on molecular genes associated

with frost tolerance. Such markers are used in molecular
genetics to identify a specific sequence of DNA or proteins
that show heritable variation. The scientists examine several
strawberry varieties under controlled cold-temperature
studies in the laboratory to pinpoint the relevant markers.
They have found a clear link between frost resistance and the
amount of proteins in the plants. (Fig. 1) In conclusion, a high
amount of certain proteins encoded in the genes of the
strawberries could lead to a successful frost resistance
ability. But rather than a transfer of the protein, the
‘correctly edited’ genetic material coding for the protein (the
complementary DNA) is added to the receiving cell.
However, high levels of heterologous protein expression 5 in
plants are not routinely achieved. One of the critical factors
that limit the expression rate is codon usage, due to limited
availability of particular tRNAs.

Fig. 2: A comparison of base sequences between strawberry optimized codon and

original fish AFP cDNA. Bases identical between these two sequences are boxed.
It has been necessary to optimize codon usage of several of
the genes encoding for bacteria used as bioinsecticides, in
order to achieve high expression level in plants.
Therefore, it may be possible to increase expression of the
antifreeze protein from fish (most commonly used is arctic
flounder) in strawberry, by optimizing codon usage, to mimic
highly expressed strawberry genes.
The purpose of modifying the antifreeze protein gene
originally from fish was to create a modified gene that would
be expressed strongly in strawberry cells.
The sequence of the wild type antifreeze protein gene would
be replaced with the strawberry bias codons, without
changing the amino acid composition. The base sequence of
this gene compared to original AFP gene from fish is shown in
the figure above.
 Procedure And Observation

Fishy Strawberries - Making a Frost Resistant

Strawberry

1. Fishy antifreeze gene The flounder is a fish that

is inserted in a plastid.
2. Plasmid with gene is
placed into a bacterium.
live in icy seas. It has a gene
that stops it from freezing to
death.

3. The bacterium with the

Strawberries are soft
flounder gene is used to fruits that can easily
infect strawberry cells. be damaged by frost.

4. The infected cells grow into

frost-resistant strawberry Strawberry cell

plant. with Antifreeze

 Result
A new genetically modified species of strawberries is
obtained that is frost resistant with a higher shelf life,
increased seasonal period of growth and production,
reduction in poor yields and erratic fruiting, etc.
 BIBLIOGRAPHY

1. Google
2. Wikipedia
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antifreeze_proti
en
4. Research for frost-resistant strawberry plants
- ScienceDailyhttps://www.sciencedaily.com
5. YouTube