High lycopene chlorophyll correlation

[Fusion_power]

I've been looking for high lycopene germplasm within the S. Pimpinellifolium plants from TGRC and think I may have found something interesting. All of the plants that express high lycopene are also very dark green with high levels of chlorophyll in the leaves. This correlation is significant because chlorophyll is converted to lycopene as the fruit ripen. It makes sense that a darker green plant would have more chlorophyll and therefore the potential to produce more lycopene.

I have plants that express very dark green foliage but do not express highler lycopene. There is a particular shade of dark green that appears to be associated with increased lycopene content in ripe fruit.

There is a strong probability that this is linked into the nitrogen cycle since nitrogen is very heavily used to produce chlorophyll. In other words, ability to efficiently absorb and metabolize nitrogen may be required in order for a plant to overexpress chlorophyll and then lycopene.

[Darren Abbey]

My impression is that chlorophyll is in a side branch of the biosynthetic pathway from lycopene, meaning that chlorophyll isn't converted into lycopene. However, their synthesis does have a common root that can be over-activated to result in increases in both pathways.

[travis]

Fusion, one line of a cross I made between Cherokee Purple and a pink tomato has produced two different expressions of high crimson flesh. One is a pink with high crimson flesh, and the other is a purple with high crimson flesh. I have to assume the high crimson flesh is coming from the Cherokee Purple side of the pedigree, as I never saw the high crimson in the pink parent. But it is only an assumption at this time.

[Fusion_power]

Tomato red colour is the result of chlorophyll degradation as well as synthesis of lycopene and other carotenoids, as chloroplasts are converted into chromoplasts.

Note that says chlorophyll degradation in the fruit and that chloroplasts are converted to chromoplasts. From a bit of delving around on the net, it looks like the cellular structures that contain chlorophyll are degraded into inert materials, then the structures are re-filled with lycopene. The lycopene is synthesized in part from degradation products produced from chlorophyll.

[bower]

Chlorophyll is a pretty fascinating pigment in its own right. Different shades of green represent variants in the chemical structure which are keyed to absorb specific wavelengths of light. Some variants work better for photosynthetic purposes in full sun and others are more efficient in shade.

I've noticed that some tomato plants have much lighter coloured foliage than others, notably this year Azoychka and Northern Lights, and others I recall seem to be mainly yellow or orange fruited varieties - I guess that would fit your theory about the dark green - lycopene correlation..

[travis]

With regard to dark green foliage's relationship to high lycopene, I have seen that dark green foliage seems linked to chlorophyll retention in varieties such as Cherokee Purple, etc.; but I have not necessarily seen dark green foliage uniform across all the high lycopene varieties that I grow.

Some of the high lycopene types I currently grow include Sun Coast; Tasti-Lee and Tasti-Lee F2, F3, F4; and certain lines from (Mozark x Sioux) x Neptune and Cherokee Purple x Summerpink. Seems the Cherokee Purple crosses have the darker green foliage, as do the ogc Tasti-Lee grow-outs, but I don't see it in Sun Coast which is the standard source of ogc in many of the IFAS lines.

I have not done this yet, but you may wish to read all the release notices for the ogc breeding lines from NCSU to see if there is a correlation between dark green foliage and high lycopene:
http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/fletcher/pro...mato/releases/

Brief looksee: Piedmont (dark green foliage), NC 84173 (no mention of hue depth), Mountain Crest (medium green), Plum Crimson (medium green), NC EBR 7 (no mention of foliage hue). NC EBR 8 (dark green) ... the last two being NCSU's primary ogc plum type breeding lines at the time of the web page's publication.

[Fusion_power]

PV, b^og is out of S. Chilense and only gives 2 to 4 times the lycopene content of a normal tomato. The plants I'm working with hit 6 to 10 times normal and are from S. Pimpinellifolium. LA2093 is up to 350 mg per gram and was used by Foolad to breed a high lycopene variety. You can find info in several articles with google search for "Foolad high lycopene tomato".

I would generally agree that plants based on the b^og gene on chromosome 6 do not affect leaf color. I am speculating that the two novel genes involved in the high lycopene content of LA2093 may affect leaf chlorophyll to some extent. Foolad applied for a patent on the two genes which he identified and mapped to chromosomes 7 and 12. The patent is US20130074204 A1 and is worth looking up to see what he describes.

I am growing 2 plants that had the most intense red color in my garden last year. They were even more intense red than LA2093 which I had growing and used for comparison. I also have some crosses growing that express the leaf color and to some extent have increased red color fruit.

The effect of ug (uniform green) is to reduce overall chlorophyll content in the fruit. I agree that varieties without ug seem to have darker green foliage.

[zipcode]

Is there a simple way of determining lycopene content?

[Sicilianu]

There are also the hp-1 and hp-2 genes which seem to increase carotenoids (including lycopene) as well as darkening immature fruit.
http://tgrc.ucdavis.edu/Data/Acc/dat...start=nav.html

http://tgrc.ucdavis.edu/Data/Acc/dat...start=nav.html

[Fusion_power]

Avoid hp-1 and hp-2 like the plague. They carry serious deleterious side effects. The worst is that they reduce fruit size dramatically.

[Sicilianu]

Originally Posted by Fusion_power

Avoid hp-1 and hp-2 like the plague. They carry serious deleterious side effects. The worst is that they reduce fruit size dramatically.

Really?? I just ordered a San Marzano line from UC Davis which carries the hp-2 gene because I thought it would be good for the breeding project. I was looking at combining hp-2 with the B (beta-carotene) gene to increase beta-carotene even more in the fruit. What other issues does the hp-2 gene have?

[loeb]

I wonder what is needed to make a high chlorophyll tomato.. like, dark green inside, when ripe.

[Dutch]

Originally Posted by loeb

I wonder what is needed to make a high chlorophyll tomato.. like, dark green inside, when ripe.

This is a link to some good articles written by Majid Foolad PhD, Professor of Plant Genetics at Pennsylvania State University ; http://www.researchgate.net/profile/...d/publications

Dutch

[loeb]

Thank you Dutch, a good lecture.

[nicollas]

What other issues does the hp-2 gene have?

Yield reduction too