Genetic engineering in tomato

Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) has evolved from Solanum pimpinellifolium during the crop evolution process (Ali et al., 2014). Its dual nature makes it the opposite of being a fruit or a vegetable. Tomato holds high nutritional importance harboring antioxidants that help in controlling cancer and cardiac disorders (Kang et al., 2022; Li et al., 2022). Tomato germplasm resources (Germplasm Resources Information Network, AVRDC) in various parts of the world inhabit tomato seed stocks hosting huge genetic variation. Legitimate breeding technologies utilized by institutes, universities, and individual efforts have produced significant breeding lines and hybrids, i.e., the mountain series from North Carolina, with useful results. Other breeding programs adopted at various corporations, such as Heinz, Monsanto, Bejoseed, and BHN Seed, have attempted to improve both the physical and qualitative characteristics of tomato, along with biotic and abiotic resistance. The tomato genome sequencing project has generated a database of genomic sequences (Mueller, 2009; Ramanujan, 2007). Later, the complete genome of a tomato cultivar called “Heinz” was published in 2012 in Nature ( Sato et al., 2012 ). Since other fruits like apples, bananas, melons, and strawberries express similar characteristics and genes, the published genome has been reported to help improve the food quality, security and costs of production in all such fruit types ( http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/May12/TomatoSeq.html ). Genetic modification in tomatoes has increased its use at a high scale by improving the desired traits. Altering its various traits, its ripening period has been manipulated thus increasing its shelf life (Redenbaugh et al., 1992). Scientists have, for a long, been trying to improve tomatoes against pests and environmental stresses through agrobacterium-mediated transformation techniques (Huang et al., 2023). The genetic manipulation in higher plants has an immense attraction on account of being the source of staple foodstuffs including essential dietary components, e.g., carotenoids. Genetic engineering of different metabolites has paved the way for deeper insights into developing transgenic varieties, containing a relatively higher level of lycopene b-carotene and xanthophylls (Kang et al., 2022; Rivero et al., 2022; Fraser and Bramley, 2004). However, the success of such engineered compounds has been lessened by the endogenous carotenoid pathways in higher plants (Fraser et al., 2009). Isoprenoid synthesis through constitutive overexpression of a bacterial phytoene desaturase has also been used to generate high b-carotene tomato varieties (Römer et al., 2000).