Genetic Discovery Reveals New Way to Produce More Tomatoes

Tomatoes that are used in sauces and juice are harvested from plants that stop growing earlier than classic tomato varieties. More like bushes, these plants actually produce fewer fruits than their home garden cousins. Now, researchers have found a way to coax these plants to produce more fruit while still maintaining their busy plant shape.

The researchers actually focused on hybrid vigor, a property of plant breeding that has been exploited to boost yield since the early 20^th century. In this case, the scientists teased out the subtleties of a type of hybrid vigor involving just one gene. This not only tweaked the length of time that bushy tomato varieties could produce flowers, but also raised fruit yield.

Hybrid vigor involves interbreeding genetically distinct plants to create offspring that are far more robust than either of the parent plants. This method helps improve agricultural productivity, but researchers have long debated why exactly this technique works.

In this study, the researchers found that bushy plants with a mutation in one of the two copies of the florigen gene, which is a hormone that controls the process of flowering, produces half as much florigen as plants without the mutation. The plants with this mutation also postpone the moment when they stop producing flowers. This, in turn, leads to many more fruits overall.

"This is because bushy tomato varieties are highly sensitive to the amount, or dosage, of the florigen hormone, which alters plant architecture--that is, how many flowers can form before growth ends," said Zach Lippman, one of the researchers, in a news release. "These discoveries lead to an exciting prediction: that it may be possible to tweak florigen levels to increase yields even further."

The findings could help increase tomato yield, which could mean that smaller areas would be needed for agriculture. This could have huge implications for future farming applications.

The findings are published in the journal PLOS Genetics.