4.6 Article

Modelling predicts tomatoes can be bigger and sweeter if biophysical factors and transmembrane transports are fine-tuned during fruit development

Journal

NEW PHYTOLOGIST
Volume 230, Issue 4, Pages 1489-1502

Publisher

WILEY
DOI: 10.1111/nph.17260

Keywords

fruit growth; fruit quality; global sensitivity analysis; metabolic modeling; model integration; primary metabolism; virtual experiment; water and carbon flux

Categories

Funding

  1. Frimouss [ANR-15-CE20-0009]
  2. National Key R&D Program of China [2019YFD1000100]
  3. Eranet-EraSysBio + FRuit Integrative Modelling
  4. PHENOME [ANR-11-INBS-0012]
  5. PHENOME (French Agence Nationale de la Recherche)
  6. Bureau of International Cooperation
  7. Chinese Academy of Sciences [151111KYSB20170032]

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Researchers developed an integrative model combining fruit growth and sugar metabolism models, successfully simulating the growth and carbon metabolism of tomato fruits. By simulating fruits of different genotypes, they found that larger and sweeter tomatoes could be obtained by manipulating biophysical factors and transmembrane transports.
The trade-off between yield and quality, a major problem for the production of fleshy fruits, involves fruit expansive growth and sugar metabolism. Here we developed an integrative model by coupling a biophysical model of fleshy fruit growth processes, including water and carbon fluxes and organ expansion, with an enzyme-based kinetic model of sugar metabolism to better understand the interactions between these two processes. The integrative model was initially tested on tomato fruit, a model system for fleshy fruit. The integrative model closely simulated the biomass and major carbon metabolites of tomato fruit developing under optimal or stress conditions. The model also performed robustly when simulating the fruit size and sugar concentrations of different tomato genotypes including wild species. The validated model was used to explore ways of uncoupling the size-sweetness trade-off in fruit. Model-based virtual experiments suggested that larger sweeter tomatoes could be obtained by simultaneously manipulating certain biophysical factors and transmembrane transports. The integrative fleshy fruit model provides a promising tool to facilitate the targeted bioengineering and breeding of tomatoes and other fruits.

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