Tweaked tomato plants yield more fruit and resist stress better
Luo Q, Ma Y, Liu H, Zhang J, Wu C
Crop Improvement
The tomatoes ripening on your patio vine are limited by a built-in inefficiency in how plants recycle nitrogen after they capture sunlight, and this fix points toward sturdier, better-tasting tomatoes down the road.
Plants waste some energy on a process called photorespiration, and past attempts to fix it only addressed the carbon side of the problem, ignoring nitrogen. Researchers built a four-gene bypass in tomato chloroplasts that handles both at once, so the plant recycles nitrogen more efficiently while also concentrating more carbon dioxide where it's needed. The result: tomato plants that grow better, yield more, produce higher-quality fruit, and tolerate heat, low nitrogen, and other stresses better than plants with only the carbon fix.
Key Findings
Engineered GCMG tomato bypass combines carbon-concentrating and nitrogen-reassimilation pathways using four genes (SlGLO1, SlCAT2, SlMSA, SlGS2)
15N-labeling showed a 146% higher nitrogen turnover rate compared to wild-type plants
GCMG plants outyielded wild-type and showed better resilience to nitrogen deficiency, high oxygen, and heat stress
chevron_right Technical Summary
Scientists re-engineered how tomato plants process a wasteful byproduct of photosynthesis, and by fixing both the carbon and nitrogen sides of the problem at once, they got plants that grow bigger, produce more fruit, and hold up better under heat and nutrient stress.
Abstract Preview
Original paper
Chloroplast photorespiratory bypass in tomato couples carbon-nitrogen assimilation to increase yield and fruit quality.
Photorespiration is vital for C3 plant carbon (C) and nitrogen (N) metabolism, yet most engineering ignores N-related constraints. Here, we engineered a chloroplast-targeted bypass in tomato (GCMG)...
open_in_new Read full abstractAbstract copyright held by the original publisher.
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