Tomato, ranking 1st in the world for vegetables, accounts for 14% of world vegetable production (over 100 million metric tons/year $ 1.6 billion market; (Food and Agriculture Organisation [FAO] 2010). Tomato is a rich source of micronutrients for human diet. It is also an acknowledged model species for research on fruit development and metabolite accumulation. The major goals of tomato breeders...

This research was undertaken for optimizing simple and reproducible protocol on indirect regeneration in tomato using kinetin. The effect of kinetin for efficient callus production was studied and its results were interpreted. Hypocotyls and cotyledons were used as explants and effect on callus derived regeneration was greatly influenced by addition of kinetin in media. The individually positio...

Acyl sugars present in the tomato Solanum lycopersicum 'LA-716' accession confer good levels of resistance to arthropod pests. The objective of the present study was to select F₂ plants from the interspecific cross Solanum pennellii 'LA-716' x Solanum lycopersicum 'Redenção' to assess resistance to spider mites (Tetranychus urticae) based on the leaf acyl sugar content and repellence tests. Fou...

Ammonium transporters (AMTs) play a role in the uptake of ammonium, the form in which nitrogen is preferentially absorbed by plants. Vigna subterranea (VsAMT1) and Solanum tuberosum (StAMT1) AMT1s were characterized using molecular biology and bioinformatics methods. AMT1-specific primers were designed and used to amplify the AMT1 internal regions. Nucleotide sequencing, alignment and phylogene...

Solanum lycopersicum and Moringa oleifera are two essential nutraceutical-containing plants from different families, sources of abundant metabolites. They have a variety applications in medicines, functional food additives even water purification. This review aims to complement earlier reviews by comparing the metabolite profiles modern-day pharmacological relevance both plants. The metabolome ...

Semi-polar metabolites such as flavonoids, phenolic acids, and alkaloids are very important health-related compounds in tomato. As a first step to identify genes responsible for the synthesis of semi-polar metabolites, quantitative trait loci (QTLs) that influence the semi-polar metabolite content in red-ripe tomato fruit were identified, by characterizing fruits of a population of introgressio...