TOMATO FRUIT FIRMNESS: BREEDING FOR LONG SHELF LIFE WHILE CONSERVING QUALITY IS NOW POSSIBLE

Development of flavorful and nutritious yet firm and long shelf-life tomatoes is the holy grail in tomato improvement. So far,tomato genes carrying mutations blocking ethylene synthesis have been successfully used to modulate fruit firmness and to extend shelf-life in commercially available tomatoes. Unfortunately, besides the beneficial effect on delaying softening, these genes negatively affect fruit color, flavor, and nutritional value. As a result,it is generally accepted that most modern tomato cultivars have lost their flavor and nutritional content affecting consumption and supermarket sales. As opposed to commercial tomato cultivars, the Texas A&M TAM-SP18-157 inbred line is extraordinarily firm resulting in long shelf-life fruit conserving quality. Tomatoes from the inbred line have high dry matter and lack of locule gel. These characteristics make tomatoes from TAM-SP18-157 exceptional for fresh consumption since they are firm and do not leak when sliced or diced, a highly desirable characteristics by the industry and consumers.This proposed project aims to characterize the novel tomato firmness traits in TAM-SP18-157 breeding line to develop tomato cultivars with extended shelf life while conserving quality using molecular breeding and metabolomic approaches.This project will target threeindependentsub-objectives:(1)Identify gene controlling lack of locule gel phenotype and fine mapping pericarp firmness QTLs.Hypothesis:fruit firmness traitsare the result of a lack of locule geland pericarp QTL firmness novel alleles inTAM-Sp18-157.(2)Determine the effect of locule gel and fruit pericarp firmness on nutritional content in tomato.Hypothesis:dry matter in TAM-Sp18-157 results in improved nutritional content that can be maintained during produce shelf-life.(3)Determine the effect of locule gel and pericarp fruit firmness traits on tomato ripening and shelf-life.Hypothesis:firmness traits in TAM-Sp18-157 modify the ripening process resulting in extended shelf-life.