tomato production, growing nearly 40 percent of world supply. The majority of fruit is processed into concentrated paste, but an increasing percentage is being used for products utilizing peeled fruit, either whole or diced. Important fruit quality attributes for paste production are soluble solids content (SS) and color of the blended product. Uniformity of color is more important for peeled f...

Climacteric fruit ripening is regulated by the phytohormone ethylene. ETHYLENE-INSENSITIVE3 (EIN3) is a transcription factor that functions downstream from the ethylene receptors in the Arabidopsis ethylene signal transduction pathway. Three homologues of the Arabidopsis EIN3 gene have been identified in tomato, Lycopersicon esculentum, EIN3-like or LeEIL, LeEIL1, LeEIL2, and LeEIL3. These tran...

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) play important roles in plant development through regulation of gene expression by mRNA degradation or translational inhibition. Despite the fact that tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) is the model system for studying fleshy fruit development and ripening, only a few experimentally proven miRNA targets are known, and the role of miRNA action in these processes remains largely unk...

Ethylene initiates the ripening and senescence of climacteric fruit, whereas polyamines have been considered as senescence inhibitors. Ethylene and polyamine biosynthetic pathways share S-adenosylmethionine as a common intermediate. The effects of 1-methylcyclopropene (1-MCP), an inhibitor of ethylene perception, on ethylene and polyamine metabolism and associated gene expression was investigat...

Virus-induced gene silencing (VIGS) is a powerful tool for reverse genetics in tomato (Solanum lycopersicum). However, the irregular distribution of the effects of VIGS hampers the identification and quantification of nonvisual phenotypes. To overcome this limitation, a visually traceable VIGS system was developed for fruit, comprising two elements: (1) a transgenic tomato line (Del/Ros1) expre...

The tomato fruit consists of a thick, fleshy pericarp composed predominantly of highly vacuolated parenchymatous cells, which surrounds the seeds. During ripening, the activation of gene expression results in dramatic biochemical and physiological changes in the pericarp. The polygalacturonase (PG) gene, unlike many fruit ripening-induced genes, is not activated by the increase in ethylene horm...

The involvement of ethylene in fruit ripening is well documented, though knowledge regarding the crosstalk between ethylene and other hormones in ripening is lacking. We discovered that AUXIN RESPONSE FACTOR 2A (ARF2A), a recognized auxin signaling component, functions in the control of ripening. ARF2A expression is ripening regulated and reduced in the rin, nor and nr ripening mutants. It is a...

Chloroplast-to-chromoplast transitions during fruit ripening require massive transformation of the plastid internal membrane structure as the photosynthetic apparatus is disassembled. Early Light-Inducible Proteins (ELIPs) are known to accumulate in chloroplasts during thylakoid biogenesis and under stressful conditions. To determine if ELIP may also play a role in thylakoid disassembly during ...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS The mechanisms involving light control of vitamin C content in fruits are not yet fully understood. The present study aimed to evaluate the impact of fruit and leaf shading on ascorbate (AsA) accumulation in tomato fruit and to determine how fruit sugar content (as an AsA precursor) affected AsA content. METHODS Cherry tomato plants were grown in a glasshouse. The control ...

Tomato fruit ripening is a complex developmental programme partly mediated by transcriptional regulatory networks. Several transcription factors (TFs) which are members of gene families such as MADS-box and ERF were shown to play a significant role in ripening through interconnections into an intricate network. The accumulation of large datasets of expression profiles corresponding to different...