Novel tomato flavours introduced by plastidial terpenoid pathway engineering.
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.
Nestlé Research Center, Nestec Ltd., Vers-chez-les-Blanc, CH-1000 Lausanne 26, Switzerland. beat.mollet@rdls.nestle.com
Beat
B
Mollet
Peter
P
Niederberger
Vincent
V
Pétiard
D005421:Flavoring Agents / Q000378:metabolism*; D005818:Genetic Engineering / Q000379:methods*; D018551:Solanum lycopersicum / Q000235:genetics*; D030821:Plants, Genetically Modified; D018087:Plastids / Q000378:metabolism*; D013729:Terpenes / Q000378:metabolism*
D005421:Flavoring Agents; D013729:Terpenes