Optimisation of tomato fruit carotenoid content for nutritional improvement and industrial exploitation.

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The colour of most fruits, flowers and vegetables is due to the presence of natural pigments such as carotenoids. This specific class of chemical molecules are also essential components of the human diet. In the body, they have a beneficial effect dissipating reactive molecular species that can damage biological structures. In addition to dietary sources, carotenoids are also synthesised chemically using petrochemical by-products. This chemical production of carotenoids generates products that are used in the health, food, feed, cosmetic and pharma industry. The production process is expensive, results in unnatural compound mixtures and has unfavourable environmental credentials. Therefore, generating renewable sources of these compounds, and others, is an important challenge that will have far reaching benefits for society. The increase of carotenoid pigments in plants, through traditional and modern genetic intervention approaches to boost biosynthesis, has been the biotechnological focus for several decades. However, with the advent of genome sequencing and other modern technologies, it has become apparent that the degradation of these compounds is an important factor that acts to regulate levels in tissues/organs such as flowers, fruit and seeds. An important enzyme that can potentially act on carotenoids to convert them to smaller products derived from their parent molecules has been identified. In order to confirm and determine the effects of this enzyme further, we will:(i) Use tomato varieties with altered carotenoid content and determine carotenoid levels compared to their derived apocarotenoids. This will provide information on how the plant balances its carotenoid content.(ii) Isolate/enrich the enzyme activity and introduce precursors to ascertain the potential resulting products.(iii) Generate and characterise plants which have been altered to prevent carotenoid degradation. Studying these plants will allow us, in crop plants, to determine the role played by carotenoid catabolism. Collectively these data will, in the future, have societal and economic impact benefiting the consumer, welfare services and industries.