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The carrot genome sequence brings colors out of the dark

Nature Genetics volume 48, pages 589–590 (2016)Cite this article

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The genome sequence of carrot (Daucus carota L.) is the first completed for an Apiaceae species, furthering knowledge of the evolution of the important euasterid II clade. Analyzing the whole-genome sequence allowed for the identification of a gene that may regulate the accumulation of carotenoids in the root.

Carrot is among the ten most important vegetable crops and shows a worldwide distribution1. Carrots (that is, the storage roots of D. carota plants) are well known for their nutritional value due to the high content of provitamin carotenoids (alpha- and beta-carotene)2. Carotenoids also provide the orange, yellow and red colors characteristic of these vegetables. Indeed, the name of these pigments derives from carota, the Latin word for carrot, and was coined in 1831 by the German pharmacist H.W.F. Wackenroder3. Carrot belongs to the Apiaceae (Umbelliferae) family, which contains about 3,700 species, including celery, parsley, parsnip, and many herb and spice plants. Carrot was domesticated in Central Asia as a root crop around 1,100 years ago, and its distribution then expanded to both the east and west4. Whereas wild carrots are white and produce low levels of carotenoids, the first domesticated carrots were purple and yellow because of the accumulation of anthocyanins and the carotenoid lutein, respectively. Orange carrots accumulating alpha- and beta-carotene were not reported until the sixteenth century in Europe, and red carrots, which contain the red carotenoid lycopene, were seen in Asia in the eighteenth century. Modern carrot varietal groups differ in root color, shape and size, some of the chief traits in carrot breeding programs. On page 657 of this issue, Philipp Simon and colleagues5 report a high-quality assembly of the carrot genome and propose a mechanism to explain what makes carrot so unique among plants: the production and accumulation of astounding levels of carotenoids in the storage root.

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Figure 1: Phylogenetic tree displaying the species with an available genome sequence from the euasterid II clade: carrot, sunflower, horseweed, artichoke and lettuce.

Kim Caesar/Nature Publishing Group

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jordi Garcia-Mas and Manuel Rodriguez-Concepcion are at the Center for Research in Agricultural Genomics (CRAG) CSIC-IRTA-UAB-UB, Barcelona, Spain, and,

    Jordi Garcia-Mas & Manuel Rodriguez-Concepcion

  2. Jordi Garcia-Mas is also at the Institut de Recerca i Tecnologia Agroalimentàries, Barcelona, Spain.,

    Jordi Garcia-Mas

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  1. Jordi Garcia-Mas
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  2. Manuel Rodriguez-Concepcion
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Correspondence to Jordi Garcia-Mas.

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Garcia-Mas, J., Rodriguez-Concepcion, M. The carrot genome sequence brings colors out of the dark. Nat Genet 48, 589–590 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1038/ng.3574

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