Flavor and Other Quality Traits of Tomato Cultivars Bred for Diverse Production Systems as Revealed in Organic Low-Input Management

Abstract

This study was conducted to determine the volatile organic compounds (VOCs) associated with fruit flavor in diverse tomato cultivars (salad and cocktail cultivars) under organic low-input production. For this objective, 60 cultivars deriving from very diverse breeding programs 1880–2015 were evaluated in 2015, and a subset of 20 cultivars was selected for further evaluation in 2016. The diversity of instrumentally determined traits, especially for VOCs concentration and sensory properties (fruit firmness, juiciness, skin firmness, sweetness, sourness, aroma, and acceptability), was investigated at two harvest dates. The evaluation of the cultivars exhibited a wide range of variation for all studied traits, with the exception of a few VOCs. Cultivar had the most important effect on all instrumentally determined traits, while the influence of cultivar × harvest date × year interaction was significant for 17 VOCs, but not for total soluble solid (TSS) and titratable acidity (TA). The VOCs with the highest proportion (>8%) were hexanal, 6-methyl-5-heptene-2-one, 2-isobutylthiazole, and (E)-2-hexenal, which were identified in all cultivars. Twelve VOCs significantly correlated with one or more sensory attributes and these VOCs also allowed differentiation of the fruit type. Among these VOCs, phenylethyl alcohol and benzyl alcohol positively correlated with acceptability in the cocktail cultivars, whereas 2-isobuthylthiazole and 6-methyl-5-hepten-2-ol negatively correlated with acceptability in the salad cultivars. As a result of this study, organic breeders are recommended to use cultivars from a wide range of breeding programs to improve important quality and agronomic traits. As examples, salad tomatoes “Campari F1”, “Green Zebra”, and “Auriga”, as well as cocktail tomatoes “Supersweet 100 F1”, “Sakura F1”, and “Black Cherry” showed higher scores for the sensory attributes aroma and acceptability under organic low-input growing conditions. It remains a challenge for breeders and growers to reduce the trade-off of yield and quality.

Flavour improvement in early generations of fresh market tomatoes (Solanum lycopersicum): I. Identification of QTL for sensory attributes, physicochemical measurements and volatile compounds

“…Apparently, these two special sensory attributes were not perceived as typical for tomatoes and might be specific to this mapping population. In agreement with Baldwin et al (2015) and Erika et al (2022), we found significant correlations between TSS and sweetness ( r = .57) and between TA and sourness ( r = .23). Although measuring TSS and TA allows breeders to select for tomato taste (Tandon et al, 2003), Colantonio et al (2022) emphasized the importance of aroma volatiles for sensory attributes by quantifying the proportion of phenotypic variance explained by sugars, acids and volatile compounds.…”

“…Flavour is not only influenced by genetics but also by environmental factors and agronomic handling (Baldwin et al, 2015;Erika et al, 2022;Klee & Tieman, 2018), as also shown by our results…”

“…Flavour is not only influenced by genetics but also by environmental factors and agronomic handling (Baldwin et al, 2015; Erika et al, 2022; Klee & Tieman, 2018), as also shown by our results (Tables S4 and S5). Most sensory attributes and physicochemical measurements and several volatile compounds showed higher values in organic cultivation (Tables 2 and 3).…”

Improving Whole Tomato Transformation for Prostate Health: Benign Prostate Hypertrophy as an Exploratory Model

“…Although numerous plant compounds have revealed bioactive properties, including antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and anticancer, the combination of the tomato and the olive has several advantages: (a) none of the other “plant compounds” have the properties of tomato and olive in terms of fulfilling the criteria that we have referred to in the section “Tomato and olive eco sustainability” [ 13 , 58 , 59 , 60 , 61 , 62 , 63 , 64 , 65 , 66 , 67 , 68 , 69 , 70 , 71 , 72 , 73 , 74 ], representing a limitation in their use as functional foods; (b) a dose-dependent effect has been demonstrated only for a limited number of plants; (c) none of the other plant compounds are known to concentrate in the prostate and to provide the complex of molecules with converging biological effects such as those summarized in Table 1 ; and (d) when dealing with aging-related prostate diseases, the WTBS is also endowed with anti-androgen receptor inhibition [ 120 ].…”

“…Tomato, which represents the second most popular crop worldwide [ 59 ], has a high global consumption rate [ 60 ]. The fruit, characterized by extensive biodiversity [ 61 ] and chemodiversity [ 62 ], with a high average nutritional yield [ 63 ], requires timely controlled irrigation and moderate soil tillage [ 64 ]. Tomatoes accumulate low levels of environmental contaminants [ 65 ] in the fruit and are thus considered to be an “excluder plant” since they concentrate soil contaminants in the roots, stems, and shoots [ 64 ].…”