Fig. 2: Phenotypic plasticity and color changes in apples fruit exposed to different altitude conditions.

The impact of altitude on the phenotype at three final ripening stages (120, 140, and 160 days after full blossom; DAFB), color index (%), anthocyanins content (mg 100 g⁻¹ FW), hue angle (h^o), lightness (L), redness (a) and yellowness (b) between the two environmental distinct regions (20 and 750 m). The vertical bar represents the least significant difference (LSD) at 5% level of significance, of three independent biological measurements, which was used for means comparison between the different altitudes (low- and high-) and timepoints (DAFB), while the vertical bars at each timepoint represent the standard error of the means (SEM). Specifically, metabolites of increased abundance at high altitude were the carbohydrate sugars arabinose, xylose, sucrose, turanose, talose, as well as citric acid (organic acid) and lactitol (polyol) (Fig. 3, Supplementary Table 1). Meanwhile, metabolites with decreased abundance at high altitude were the organic acids fumarate, quinate, and malate, the carbohydrate sugars rhamnose and fucose, as well as the amino acid glutamic acid (Fig. 3, Supplementary Table 1)