Abstract
Grafting is a common agricultural technique widely used in horticulture plants to improve stress tolerance, increase yield and improve quality. However, the biochemical processes underlying graft healing, especially the temporal dynamics and specific roles of polyphenolic metabolites, remain largely unknown. Polyphenols, widely present in plants, possess many biological activities, including antioxidant, antibacterial and anti-inflammatory properties. Temporal-resolution metabolomics, a powerful tool for studying metabolite dynamics over time, offers insights into the metabolic changes during this critical phase. To better understand this process, internodes above and below the graft site were harvested from 12 time points after grafting in both non-grafted and grafted peppers for polyphenolic metabolism analyses. In this study, we describe the accumulation pattern of 432 polyphenol metabolites. By comparing with the control group, nine polyphenolics were identified that responded to graft healing. The high temporal-resolution metabolomics reported here provides a basic resource for future functional study to unravel the genetic control of pepper graft development.