The delicate tomato, with its short shelf life and high price volatility, may not remain as perishable as it is today. A leading Indian biotechnology company, Bioseed Research India, recently announced its collaboration with a foreign company, Arcadia Biosciences, to develop tomatoes with an extended shelf life.
In another unrelated development, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) in partnership with scientists from 13 other countries, has reportedly decoded the tomato genome. This would greatly help develop improved varieties of tomatoes through molecular breeding. These events are indicative of rapid strides in the fundamental and applied research on tomatoes, which also has vast commercial implications.
The genome decoding project has helped locate the exact position of each of 35,000 genes in the tomato’s 12 chromosomes. Work is on to track the genetic traits that each of these genes controls. Indian researchers are focusing on analysing genes or gene families that influence tomato fruit ripening and determine the plant’s ability to withstand drought, floods, heat, cold and so on. This will allow biotechnologists to pick up the gene that controls the desired characteristics and insert it in any tomato variety or hybrid to enhance its utility for both farmers and consumers.
Interestingly, the genome research project is relevant to contemporary research. It has unveiled a fascinating fact about the evolution of the tomato plant. It has been shown that the tomato genome had suddenly “triplicated” (through natural processes) 60 million years ago, close to the period of mass extinction of life forms from this planet that also led to disappearance of dinosaurs. However, most of the “triplicated genes” were lost subsequently. Fortunately, the genes that managed to survive are those that control some of the commercially important features of tomato, such as fruit quality, its firmness, red pigmentation and ripening period.
The collaboration between Arcadia Biosciences and Bioseed Research India, on the other hand, is essentially a research-based commercial effort to exploit the genes that influence ripening, flavour and nutrition of tomato. It is aimed at evolving value-added tomato strains for the benefit of both tomato growers and consumers.
Arcadia, a US-based agricultural technology firm, has identified genetic variations that allow tomatoes to ripen on the plant and yet remain durable enough to withstand packaging and transportation. This has been made possible through a non-transgenic breeding technology called “tilling”, which uses molecular screens to detect minute variations in a plant’s genome. It enables plant breeders to precisely identify useful traits and keep track of them during breeding cycles. This technology will be available to Bioseed Research India, a fully owned subsidiary of DCM Shriram Consolidated Ltd (DSCL). This technology will allow DSCL to expand its hybrid tomato seed development programme to evolve India-specific, long shelf-life tomato hybrids with fruit qualities preferred by local consumers. The new hybrids, which may take three years to develop and another one year to commercialise, will help improve transportability and prolong the shelf life by two weeks in addition to the normal seven to 10 days. The company has developed several high-yielding tomato hybrids with good fruit quality and better immunity to diseases. “Incorporation of long shelf life trait in these hybrids will further enhance the value of these hybrids and enable the growers to fetch better returns for their produce,” says Vikram Shriram, DSCL vice-chairman and managing director.
India, the world’s fourth-largest tomato producer, grows over 16.8 million tonnes (2010-11). However, thanks to poor post-harvest handling, processing, storage and transportation, as much as 15 to 25 per cent of the produce is spoilt before consumption. To reduce such losses, farmers harvest and sell raw tomatoes, though it impairs quality and taste. The application of biotechnology can, therefore, help address such issues. With increased research aimed at expanding knowledge about the genetic make-up of commercially important crops, problem-solving plant breeding would become far easier in the future.
