Zooming In on a Quantitative Trait for Tomato Yield Using Interspecific Introgressions

Abstract

To explore natural biodiversity we developed and examined introgression lines (ILs) containing chromosome segments of wild species (Solanum pennellii) in the background of the cultivated tomato (S. lycopersicum). We identified Brix9-2-5, which is a S. pennellii quantitative trait locus (QTL) that increases sugar yield of tomatoes and was mapped within a flower- and fruit-specific invertase (LIN5). QTL analysis representing five different tomato species delimited the functional polymorphism of Brix9-2-5 to an amino acid near the catalytic site of the invertase crystal, affecting enzyme kinetics and fruit sink strength. These results underline the power of diverse ILs for high-resolution perspectives on complex phenotypes.

Evolutionarily Distinct BAHD N-acyltransferases are Responsible for Natural Variation of Aromatic Amine Conjugates in Rice

“…The variation of almost all PAs in this study was controlled by a few loci with large effects, which is in accordance with a handful of previous studies on specialized metabolites and distinct from those described for QTLs of primary traits (Fridman et al, 2004;Rowe et al, 2008;Schauer et al, 2008;Chan et al, 2010;Joseph et al, 2013;Alseekh et al, 2015;Wen et al, 2015), for which a large number of minor loci are usually detected. Tissue-specific accumulation of metabolites, representing one of the main contributions to metabolite diversity, is of great interest to plant scientists (Schilmiller et al, 2010;Chan et al, 2011;Watanabe et al, 2013).…”

“…Association mapping by GWAS is suitable for screening a large number of accessions for common variants within the population at relative high resolution (Huang et al, 2010;Huang and Han, 2012), while linkage mapping using artificial populations such as RILs and ILs is likely to be more powerful in identifying alleles with low frequency or small effects in the population (Fridman et al, 2004;Keurentjes et al, 2006;Schauer et al, 2006;Matsuda et al, 2012). Joint linkage and association mapping as illustrated in the study proved to be useful not just in cross-validating results from one another, but also complimenting each other in identifying new candidate loci (Luo, 2015).…”

Differences in regulation of carbohydrate metabolism during early fruit development between domesticated tomato and two wild relatives

“…Introgression of a CWI isoform (lin5) from S. pennellii LA0716 into S. lycopersicum resulted in a higher fruit yield and a higher soluble sugar content. This result reXects the potential of enzyme isoforms from wild species to enhance the growth and sink strength of domestic tomato fruit (Fridman et al 2004).…”

Regulatory change at Physalis Organ Size 1 correlates to natural variation in tomatillo reproductive organ size

“…The control of berry size is a prime breeding target to enhance yield in these crops. Nearly 30 quantitative trait loci (QTLs) accounting for fruit size were detected in tomato [7][8][9][10] , eggplants and pepper 9,11,12 . However, most of them have not been cloned, and little is known about the nature of the encoded gene products.…”