Montfavet, France
July 24, 2009
For many years, tomato breeding programmes took greater account of yield, disease-resistance, adaptation, greenhouse cultivation or commercial qualities (appearance, homogeneity, lifespan, firmness) than of the flavour and aroma of the fruits. It is therefore not surprising that some consumers complain about a lack of flavour in the tomatoes currently available on the market. The EU-SOL project was set up in order to respond to these consumer expectations; it groups some fifty partners, including around twenty tomato breeders.
A clearer understanding of Europe-wide consumer preferences will allow breeders to better take account of this criterion in their breeding schemes and to identify the most relevant traits to be selected. In the context of the European EU-SOL project, scientists carried out surveys on more than 800 consumers in three countries – the Netherlands, France and Italy – concerning a series of tomato varieties representative of different market segments. In each country, expert panels established the sensory profiles of these different varieties. Preference maps were then drawn up for each of the countries, and thus revealed the traits that needed to be improved in order to satisfy consumers. Global analysis showed that consumer preferences were very similar from one country to another, that several groups of consumers could be identified in each country and that segmentation was based first of all on taste and then on texture. Detailed analysis also showed that appearance was a very important trait for consumers and needed to be taken into account.
Other researchers working on this project studied how it would be possible to enhance the flavour of tomatoes, because this is one of the traits targeted by consumers. The flavour of a tomato is closely linked to its sugar content. Some wild-type tomato varieties contain high levels of sugars or acids, but these traits are always associated with small fruit size. It is thus not easy to improve sugar content without detracting from fruit size. The scientists thus tried to better understand this negative correlation by working on a population of tomatoes arising from the crossing of two lines, Solanum lycopersicum (cultivated tomato) and Solanum chmielewskii (a wild-type, non-comestible species) from the genetic, genomic, metabolomic and physiological points of view. They showed that the link between sugar content and fruit size varied in different lines, and could depend not only on the number of cells in the fruit, but also on water fluxes and competition between fruits. More detailed approaches integrating genetics, genomics and physiology were also implemented to analyse fruit firmness or their composition in secondary metabolites (aromas, carotenoids and vitamins).
In parallel with this research, other scientists are creating the genomics tools necessary for these studies. Several European laboratories (including some in France) are participating in sequencing the tomato genome; populations of mutants are thus being developed and characterised and the complicated bioinformatics infrastructure necessary to manage the resulting mass of data is being organised.
Source: UR1052 Fruit and Vegetable Genetics and Breeding Unit UGAFL
Project website: www.eu-sol.net
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