EAT WILD TOMATOES FOR BETTER HEALTH
Scientists are looking at ways to develop
tomatoes that have higher antioxidant traits, just like wild tomatoes that have
such properties in abundance.
Wild tomato species have been used for improvement of tomato
disease resistance but have not been extensively explored for health-related
traits.
“Our work shows that wild tomato species harbour alleles that
could be useful for improvement of antioxidant traits in cultivated tomato,”
said professor Sami Doganlar from department of molecular biology and genetics
at Izmir Institute of Technology in Turkey.
In fact, some of the backcross progeny from the populations used
in this study could be used for breeding of these traits, Doganlar explained.
Their results can be used to design a breeding programme with
the purpose of improving antioxidant characteristics in elite tomato lines.
The team analysed three different interspecific populations of
wild tomatoes - solanum peruvianum, solanum habrochaites and solanam
pimpinellifolium - for antioxidant and agronomic traits.
The wild species retain allelic (trait) diversity which is lost
during domestication and breeding.
The study appeared in the journal HortScience.
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