MicroTom – A New Model System for Plant Genomics

The application of genetic modifications to economically important plant species primarily includes tolerance to broad-spectrum herbicides such as glufosinate or glyophosate, resistance to pest and diseases, high yield, biofuel production and better quality food products for consumption. Plant model systems have played an important role in understanding plant biology that leads to economic trait development in crops. The most highly developed plant model system is Arabidopsis because of its small size, rapid life cycle, small genome, and transformability. MicroTom is a miniature dwarf determinate tomato cultivar, originally bred for home gardening purposes, which shares the major features with Arabidopsis that make it successful as a model system, including small size (up to 1357 plants/m), short life cycle (70-90 days from sowing to fruit-ripening), relatively small genome (950 Mb) and transformability. In this article we review the current status of the genetic transformation, genome sequencing, functional genomics, reverse genetic tools and improvement of fruit nutrition and flavor quality in MicroTom/tomato, which provides a vision of a new plant model system for functional genomics and its application to economic trait development for crops. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________