Metabolic fingerprinting reveals differences between shoots of wild and cultivated carrot (Daucus carota L.) and suggests maternal inheritance or wild trait dominance in hybrids

Differences between the metabolic content of cultivars and their related wild species not only have implications for breeding and food quality, but also for the increasingly studied area of crop to wild introgression. Wild and cultivated western carrots belong to the same outcrossing species and hybridize under natural conditions. The metabolic fingerprinting of Dutch wild carrot and of western orange carrot cultivar shoots using ¹H NMR showed only quantitative differences in chemical content, indicating relatively low divergence after domestication. Main differences reside in the primary metabolite content and in the concentrations of chlorogenic acid and feruloyl quinic acid in the shoots of the different carrot types. Wild × cultivar hybrids cannot be distinguished from wild plants based on the metabolome, suggesting maternal, maternal environment, or dominance effects, and indicating high hybrid fitness in wild conditions. Considering these similarities, introgression is a real possibility in carrots, but understanding its consequences would require further studies using backcrosses in a multiple environments.