Another lycopene, more easily absorbed raw
 

I found an interesting site that researches nutrients in heirloom food crops and they found a form of lycopene that exists in some orange varieties of tomato and is easily absorbed in raw fruit stage. It’s Tetra-cis-lycopene.

There’s a list of varieties, one of which is Elbe which is the parent of 2 orange dwarfs for our project, Dwarf Blazing Beauty and Dwarf Orange Cream.

The lycopene we’re all familiar with is best absorbed in things that have been boiled a while like ketchup and passata.

Link to the list of known tomatoes with this different lycopene:

[url=https://www.heritagefoodcrops.org.nz/heirloom-tomatoes/tetra-cis-lycopene]tetra-cis-lycopene[/url]

Very interesting to browse the whole website:

[url=https://www.heritagefoodcrops.org.nz/heirloom-tomatoes]heritagefoodcrops.org[/url]

Patrina

Very interesting, thank you for posting this Patrina.
KarenO

This reminded me of a thread awhile back.

[url]http://www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?t=29111&highlight=lycopene[/url]

It is also called pro-lycopene and is controlled by the mutant allele "t" or tangerine. Most of the orange tomatoes we are familiar with are tangerine types. Other orange types are controlled by B = beta (beta-carotene) or Delta (delta-carotene). Both B and Delta are dominant alleles, t is recessive.

Beta and Delta ride on top of standard red lycopene, i.e. red lycopene is converted into beta carotene and delta is converted from the step immediately before red lycopene is formed. Tangerine is a precursor in the formation of red lycopene. The "tangerine" gene is a gene defect that prevents pro-lycopene from going through the next steps to produce regular lycopene.

How do these chemicals relate to health ? Beneficial, or harmful ?

Lycopene is supposed to be healthy (one of the healthiest components in many vegetables). Of course, there can always be mutations and exceptions.

As Fusion was saying, Beta is only functional when the red genetics are present - so no Beta yellow combinations. But tangerine can be expressed in both yellow and red genetic background, although of course only expressed when you have homozygous tt. This allows some different shades of fruit from yellower to pure orange which have the pro-lycopene.


The tangerine gene is also expressed in flower color, making the anthers a very intense orange. This is one way to tell apart the orange genetics (I am not familiar with Delta, but Beta produces normal colored flowers, and orange-red fruit in the F1).


Pro-lycopene seems to have a unique taste as well, subtle and difficult to define but enjoyable. I've only grown a few tt tangerine toms, so I might be wrong to generalize about that. Liked, all the same! :)

Fascinating!

[QUOTE=PlainJane;728649]Fascinating![/QUOTE][URL="http://www.tomatoville.com/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=728649"][IMG]http://www.tomatoville.com/images/buttons/quote.gif[/IMG][/URL]


Yep!


Kellogg's Breakfast was listed at a fairly low content, but KBX wasn't. Since KBX is supposed to have derived from KB, I wonder if it was an over site or if the changes from KB which resulted in KBX included changes in the different lycopene contents.

Adding a pic of one of the Tipsy family (Golden Dwarf Champion X Elbe) varieties for some of the above folks to speculate re lycopenes and carotenoids. It’s a pale orange coloured variety named Dwarf Orange Cream. BTW Tipsy F1 was red.

The progeny of this cross also includes a strong orange - Dwarf Blazing Beauty, 2 yellows - Banksia Queen and Dwarf Golden Gypsy, and a red variety - Sweet Scarlet Dwarf.

Patrina

PS. Sorry about the large pic, haven’t worked out how to resize pics taken on my phone yet ��

A few years back I aggregated all the research I could find about the genetics of tomato color.

[URL]https://the-biologist-is-in.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-color-of-tomatoes.html[/URL]

Interesting. I looked at the site and found I grow quite a few of them.

Carol