Rotten tomatoes no more: growing sweeter tomatoes is possible by editing just two of the fruit’s genes. Deleting the genes increased the engineered fruits’ glucose and fructose levels by up to 30% over mass-produced tomatoes, according to a study published today in Nature.
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This study is “great and significant in its field and beyond”, says Christophe Rothan, a fruit biologist at the French National Institute of Agricultural Research in Paris, who was not involved in the study. It raises the “possibility of using the great genetic diversity existing in wild species, which has been partially lost in domesticated varieties, to improve modern varieties”, he says.
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The new tomato would be welcome not only because it would make consumers happy, but also because it could cut the amount of time, energy, and money that goes into preparing other products such as tomato paste, which involves removing water from the fruit, says Ann Powell, a retired plant biochemist who previously worked at the University of California, Davis.
