A metabolomic approach to the identification of health based consumer traits in tomato

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We want to eat nice, tasty fruit and vegetables that are safe and good for us. Antioxidants are compounds found in fruits and vegetables that when obtained in the diet can help combat diseases. This is why it is important to eat fruits and vegetables regularly. In order to create improved, nutritional fruit and vegetables breeding programmes must be carried out to incorporate the desired improvements from one variety into another, which already has other worthwhile qualities. This approach utilises natural diversity and is a non-GM approach, thus avoiding the incorporation of foreign DNA. It is the composition of the molecules (chemicals) in the fruit that yield the characteristic properties we want. In order to identify improved health features and other characteristics that we want the molecules of interest have to be analysed. Modern methods enable us to identify many molecules simultaneously. We will use these chemical approaches to identify tomato varieties with improved features, especially those that will improve our health. To do this tomato collections that have had diversity crossed into a parent will be used. The amounts and types of compounds identified will be large and using computational approaches, these molecules can be linked to the desired characteristics we need to have in the final variety. In our case, this will be an enhanced level of antioxidants.