Rewiring of the Fruit Metabolome in Tomato Breeding
- Journal:
- Cell
- Published:
- DOI:
- 10.1016/j.cell.2017.12.019
- Affiliations:
- 11
- Authors:
- 20
Research Highlight
Making tomatoes tastier
© Raul Garcia Herrera / EyeEm/Getty
A detailed analysis of the chemicals found
in tomatoes could help breeders develop tastier crops.
An international team co-led by researchers
from the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences scrutinized the metabolic
constitution and genetic background of more than 600 different types of tomatoes
including old, modern and wild varieties.
They found that, in the course of tomato domestication
and modern breeding programmes, as agronomists focussed on larger fruit size,
the natural production of bitter-tasting compounds and other molecules
impacting flavour and nutrition was altered as well, compromising some of the richer
and sweeter tang associated with heirloom tomatoes today.
These changes arose as a consequence of
linkage between genes affecting fruit size and chemical composition —
suggesting that, with precision gene-editing, scientists may now be able to
decouple these traits and engineer tomatoes that possess any number of desired
characteristics related to size, taste and myriad other qualities.
References
- Cell 172, 249–261.e12 (2018). doi: 10.1016/j.cell.2017.12.019