Potassium enhances the sugar assimilation in leaves and fruit by regulating the expression of key genes involved in sugar metabolism of Asian pears

Potassium (K) plays an important role in fruit quality, and is well known as the most important quality element. A field experiment was conducted with four K levels of 0 (control), 150 (K150), 300 (K300), 450 (K450) kg K 2 O ha −1 in 2014–2015. The aim was to elucidate the roles of K in fruit growth, and the mechanism of K in regulating sugar metabolism between the leaves and fruit of Asian pear ( Pyrus L.). The results showed that the K concentration and accumulation in leaves and fruit with the net photosynthetic rate and SPAD value of leaves were found to increase with the increase of K application rates. Increasing K application rates also led to promote the effectiveness of accumulation of glucose, fructose, sorbitol, and sucrose in fruit. During the early fruit development stage, the increase of all soluble sugars in leaves was correlated with the up-regulation expression of gene AIV and S6PDH . Furthermore, with fruit development, the expression of AIV1, SPS1 and SUS, S6PDH and SDH3 involved in sugar metabolism in leaves were up-regulated by increasing the K application rates, resulting in higher accumulation of soluble sugars in leaves. Interestingly, at the fruit maturity stage the expression of SUT in leaves, and SPS1, SUS and SUT in fruit was significantly up-regulated, leading to higher sucrose accumulation in fruit. Thus, K-promoted sugar accumulation of the leaves and fruit might result from up-regulated expression levels of key genes involved in sugar metabolism by K in leaves and fruit.