Genetic diversity underlies the improvement of crops by plant breeding. Landraces of tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) can contain valuable alleles not common in modern germplasms. The aim was to measure genetic diversity present in 47 most common tomato varieties grown in Italy, 35 were varieties used for processing and 12 were landraces considered "salad varieties". Furthermore, we demonstrate...

To make a comprehensive assessment on monosodium glutamate (MSG) wastewater pollution, a pollution exposure experiment was carried out on the seed germination and root elongation of wheat, Chinese cabbage and tomato by using the wastewater discharged from different processing phases of MSG production. The results showed that there were significantly positive linear relationships between the inh...

the aim of this study was investigating the effect of gamma irradiation and naoh treatment of some agricultural by products (tomato pulp, orange pulp, pistachio hull and wheat straw) on fermentation parameters and gas production test. treatments of gamma irradiation (50, 100 and 200 kgy) and %5 naoh was done on each source of by products. the results showed that gamma irradiation at the dose of...

Although the alternative oxidase (AOX) has been proposed to play a role in fruit development, the function of AOX in fruit ripening is unclear. To gain further insight into the role of AOX in tomato fruit ripening, transgenic tomato plants 35S-AOX1a and 35S-AOX-RNAi were generated. Tomato plants with reduced LeAOX levels exhibited retarded ripening; reduced carotenoids, respiration, and ethylen...

We examined whether the reduced mycorrhization of abscisic acid (ABA)-deficient tomato mutants correlates with their incapacity in ABA biosynthesis and whether this effect is dependent on ethylene production. The mycorrhization of notabilis and sitiens mutants, which have different ABA deficiencies and an excess of ethylene production, was analyzed. Comparative analysis of the ABA-deficient tom...

Levansucrases are bacterial extracellular enzymes that act on sucrose producing b-2,6-linked fructans of varied chain length. We summarize here our up-to-date results on (i) novel methods for the production of heterologous levansucrase proteins in Escherichia coli, (ii) biochemical characterization of the levansucrases encoded in the genome of a tomato and Arabidopsis pathogen Pseudomonas syrin...

Tomato, Lycopersicon esculentum Mill is a vegetable crop of large importance throughout the world. Its annual production accounts for 107 million metric tons with fresh market tomato representing 72 % of the total (FAO, 2002). It is the first horticultural crop in Tunisia with a production area of 25,000 hectares and a total harvest of 1.1 million metric tons (DGPA, 2009) of which nearly 70 % a...

The intact fruits of preclimacteric tomato (Lycopersicon esculentum Mill) or cantaloupe (Cucumis melo L.) produced very little ethylene and had low capability of converting 1-aminocyclopropane-1-carboxylic acid (ACC) to ethylene. When these unripe tomato or cantaloupe fruits were treated with ethylene for 16 hours there was no increase in ACC content or in ethylene production rate, but the tiss...

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) production is seriously hampered by the infestation of the sweetpotato whitefly, Bemisia tabaci MEAM 1 (Middle East-Asia Minor 1). The infestation behavior of the whiteflies could be affected by the quantity of plant released volatile organic compounds (VOCs) related to nitrogen concentrations of the plant. In this study, we determined the infestation behavior of B...