Novel tomato flavours introduced by plastidial terpenoid pathway engineering

• Published in: Trends in biotechnology (Regular ed.) Vol. 26; no. 1; pp. 4 - 6
• Main Authors: Mollet, Beat, Niederberger, Peter, Pétiard, Vincent
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01.01.2008; Elsevier Science; Elsevier Limited
• Subjects: Biological and medical sciences; Biotechnology; Flavoring Agents - metabolism; Food; Free radicals; Fundamental and applied biological sciences. Psychology; Genetic engineering; Genetic Engineering - methods; Genetic technics; Internal Medicine; Lycopersicon esculentum; Lycopersicon esculentum - genetics; Methods. Procedures. Technologies; Plants, Genetically Modified; Plastids - metabolism; Quality; Seeds; Terpenes - metabolism; Tomatoes; Transgenic animals and transgenic plants; Transgenic plants; Terpenoid; Genetically modified food; Metabolic engineering; Transgenic plant; Metabolic pathway; Genetically modified organism; Tomato; Flavor
• ISSN: 0167-7799; 1879-3096
• DOI: 10.1016/j.tibtech.2007.10.004

Until recently breeding efforts centred on high-yield production while sacrificing flavour and taste quality traits of mass produced food products, such as tomatoes. The recent publication of Davidovich-Rikanati et al. demonstrates the technical feasibility of the genetical engineering of pathways in tomato plants to modify their fruit flavour profile in a proof-of-concept approach. The reported work ranks among an increasing number of reported successful modifications of edible plants with a focus on the benefits to end-consumers.