## 5 Conclusions  
In conclusion, this study offers new insights into the role of HMGR in influencing strawberry fruit coloration and aroma composition (Figure 8). HMGR regulates both the terpenoid and anthocyanin pathways, with its overexpression inhibiting fruit coloration, downregulating most anthocyanin pathway genes, and reducing aroma content. Conversely, suppression of HMGR promoted coloration and led to the identification of five new anthocyanin components. Our work also suggests MeJA as a potential mediator of HMGR's influence on terpenoid pathways. Additionally, transcription factors ERF118 and WRKY12 potentially regulate HMGR to affect fruit quality. Overall, our findings contribute to the current understanding of terpenoid metabolism and strawberry fruit quality regulation.  
**Supplementary Materials:** The following supporting information can be downloaded at: [[https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/foods14071199/s1](https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/foods14071199/s1)]([https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/foods14071199/s1](https://www.mdpi.com/article/10.3390/foods14071199/s1)), Figure S1: Comparison of the gene transcription level detected by RNA-sequencing and qRT-PCR. The green columns indicate levels detected by RNA sequencing, and the black lines indicate the qRT-PCR result. Bars represent standard deviations of the means; Figure S2: Gene dendrogram from weighted gene co-expression network analysis (WGCNA). (A) Hierarchical clustering tree illustrating gene relationships. (B) Module-sample correlation showing the strength of associations between modules and samples. (C) Analysis of the expression patterns of differentially expressed genes (DEGs) from selected typical modules; Figure S3: Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) analysis of significantly enriched differentially accumulated metabolites (DAMs) in the comparisons of HMGRR vs. HMGRC and HMGROE vs. HMGRC; Table S1: Primer used for qRT-PCR on strawberry; Table S2: CDs sequence of _FaHMGR_ and _FaHMGRi_; Table S3: General overview of transcriptome data; Table S4: The GO with the most significant enrichment of DEGs; Table S5: Genes in five main module; Table S6: The metabolites in  
Figure 8: Proposed model illustrating the impact of varying _HMGR_ expression levels on transcriptional changes and metabolite profiles linked to strawberry fruit development and aroma production.  
positive and negative ion mode; Table S7: The KEGG pathways with the most significant enrichment of DEGs.  
**Author Contributions:** Conceptualization, T.Z. and J.C.; methodology, L.W.; software, J.X.; validation, L.W. and J.W.; formal analysis, T.Z.; investigation, L.W.; resources, J.X.; data curation, L.W.; writing--original draft preparation, T.Z.; writing--review and editing, [PERSON] and J.C.; visualization, [PERSON]; supervision, [PERSON]; project administration, [PERSON]; funding acquisition, [PERSON] All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.  
**Funding:** This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (32202414).  
**Institutional Review Board Statement:** Not applicable.  
**Informed Consent Statement:** Not applicable.  
**Data Availability Statement:** All transcriptomic raw data reported in this paper have been deposited in the National Center for Biotechnology Information sequence read archive (transcriptome sequencing accession SRA accession number: PRJNA781262).  
**Conflicts of Interest:** The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.