Scientists Are Using Gene Editing To Create the Perfect Tomato For Your Salad (qz.com) 125
An anonymous reader shares an article: Geneticists are now using technology to isolate the precise genes responsible for excessive branching and flowering, characteristics which lead to less fruit and thus less yield for farmers. In a study published in the journal Cell last week, geneticist Zachary Lippman of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory explains his research team's efforts to fix mutated tomatoes using CRISPR gene editing technology. By identifying the genes associated with undesired mutations, Lippman was able to edit them and suppress their effects. After playing with the plant architecture, Lippman's team was ultimately able to engineer highly productive plants that yielded more of the desired fruit and less of the unwanted flowers and branches. Original research paper; further reading on Nature magazine.
Coldharbour? (Score:1)
Does Mr. Lippman have permission from Molag Bal to perform this research?
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Senior in high school or college?
citizen
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Err....."unwanted flowers"? I mean, you know those flowers are the parts of the tomato plants that turn INTO tomato fruits, eh???
If they get rid of the flowers in addition to the excess branches...you'll just have leaves left....no tomatoes.
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I don't usually grow tomato plants myself but it is a common practice for tomato growers to trim the plants to reduce the number of branches and flowers so that more energy will go toward less fruits that will be stronger, bigger and more flavorful than if the plan had been left alone. I guess here the gene selection is to create a better balance between the number of total flowers and the marketable quality of the fruits.
Re: Coldharbour? (Score:2)
It's the suckers you want to prune.
A sucker is a branch that grows out of an existing 'joint', where a branch has already grown.
The sucker will literally 'suck' the life out of the existing limb, yielding less fruit over all. Pruning it will stop this from happening and increase yield.
I have a 1500sqft vegetable garden in my yard. I have 20 indeterminate tomato plants growing. With proper pruning we'll probably yield about 60-80lb of tomatoes per plant throughout the growing season (1200-1600lb total).
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Still kind of seems stupid to waste all that science on tomato plant making better tomatoes, when constructing from scratch you can getter algae to produce storage pods the create the perfect tomato fruit, no seeds, a cross between the flesh carrying the seed and the rest of the fruit, really fast growing, no allergens, lots of vital trace elements built into the fruit, the perfect size, maybe even squarish for a better sandwich slice. All producible in a storage tank, close to demand and at high volumes.
S
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Tomatoes aren't even Greek, it's a Mesoamerican food that you've culturally appropriated.
Just say NO (Score:1)
to GMO.
GMO no longer evil (Score:1)
Did you miss that memo? GMO is no longer evil... To avoid a -1 Redundant, I'll just link to my earlier post on the subject [slashdot.org].
Re:Just say NO (Score:5, Insightful)
Why? GMO has been saving lives for decades now. Literally, many people would die without it. And I'm not just talking about starvation, I'm also talking about diabetic patients.
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GMOs have not been saving people from starvation.
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to GMO.
Rawr! Science BAD!
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Rawr! ALL science good.... Is what the GM supporters want us to believe which of course isn't true and GM supporters like to ignore the multiple downsides of rapidly mutating nature in a haphazard manner.
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So is the flat-Earth lobby buying the idea that gen editing is not UGGA BOOGA OMG ZOMBIE GMO?
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XKCD is never obligatory.
Perfect Tomato? (Score:5, Insightful)
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...try to put them on a steak...
Huh?
Who puts tomatoes on steak? (I have seen people put ketchup on a steak. WTF.
Re:Perfect Tomato? (Score:4, Informative)
they are indistinguishable from what you might obtain from your garden in the late summer
No, they're not.
Re:Perfect Tomato? (Score:4, Insightful)
AC doesn't garden...obviously.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
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Most people only know industrial, mass produced food, and -don't actually like things with flavour-.
Yup, exactly. Like every time someone says, "this tomato (or steak!) is so sweet," like it's a good thing. No, not everything is supposed to be sweet.
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I... leave them a well-lit place (typically a windowsill) to vine ripen ...
vine ripen == ripen on the vine. Once you pick the tomato, you cannot "vine ripen." As others have pointed out, it does make a difference and unless you grow your own or buy from a farm stand, you will never taste the difference.
Commercial growers will value the following characteristics which will make a difference in their bottom line:
* uniformity of maturity to 'ready to pick" (which is green.) so they can harvest at one time.
* uniformity of size and shape to ease handling.
* durability to withstand the r
Re:Perfect Tomato? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Perfect Tomato? (Score:4, Interesting)
Commercial tomatoes are no better in Europe. In both places, the only ripe commercial tomatoes are in cans or roadside stands.
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It's also why locally farmed produce is usually better because they can fully vine ripen and still get on the shelves before they start to look awful.
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Even if you live in one of the largest tomato producing regions, the ones in the grocery store are still harvested underripe. The ripe ones go to sauce.
You'd think they could send ripe fruit to the stores right around the corner while it was in season, but they don't.
In northern CA, before the giant cannery outside Davis closed, the tomatoes on the side of the highway (lost in transport to the cannery) were better than those in the stores.
Re:Perfect Tomato? (Score:4, Interesting)
Tomatoes are harvested green and shipped. They don't develop the sugars that make them sweet because they're not ripened on the vine. Were they vine-ripened, shipping them to remote states would land you with rotting tomatoes.
In practice, tomato flavor is related to the distance shipped from the harvesting operation. The logistics to get tomatoes to your table with less time between picking and purchasing are responsible for providing better flavor.
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My local Safeway has them.
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People complain about this a lot, but as a dork who grew tomatoes at home and looked up tomato forums, it's generally acknowledged that tomatoes don't really ripen on the vine. Once they start changing color at all, or even slightly before, you can pull them and put them in a paper bag. They will taste exactly the same upon getting ripe. In some areas of the country this is very common because of pests (squirrels, etc.) that eat half-ripened tomatoes left on the vine.
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Does "slightly" equate to "roughly 3 weeks"?
Re: Perfect Tomato? (Score:2)
Re:Perfect Tomato? (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, I was hoping to read how they created the most delicious tomato possible. I guess that's harder than just increasing yields.
Efficient mass production, not flavor and nutritional content, are the goals of this research. The focus is more tomatoes per acre and higher yields on the grocer's shelf. Obviously the resulting tomato replica has to look like a tomato, act like a tomato, taste kinda like a tomato and be more-or-less non-toxic. If it fails the last 2 criteria we'll see if marketing spin it. The tomato, like the consumer, is a product to be manipulated for the profitability of the corporation.
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Supermarket tomatoes are largely descended from a mutant discovered in the 1920s which ripened to a uniform red instead of with splotches of green. This produced a very attractive tomato, but with a drawback: it crippled the fruit's photosynthetic capability, resulting in a blander tomato.
Add to this the fact that tomatoes are picked green for ease of shipping and then artificially "ripened" by exposure to ethylene. Ethylene triggers the softening of the tomato and the development of the red carotenoid pi
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You've tasted styrofoam balls?
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Tomacco? (Score:2)
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That's interesting. I suppose you could also breed a true tomacco via selective breeding; but there's no incentive. Since there's already some nicotine in green tomatoes it would just be a matter of selecting for higher and higher concentrations. It ought to work just as the cross-breeding of cannabis strains created super high THC content.
Re: Tomacco? (Score:2)
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Can you splice Tobacco genes in too and create Tomacco?
I suppose you could, but now try keeping the stuff lit.
I see what you did there... (Score:3, Funny)
Remind me again... (Score:1)
Is this the part where Monsanto steps in to sodomize every poor person in the region with a billion dollar lawsuit, or does that come later?
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It does not appear, that Monsanto has anything to do with this particular research. Maybe, they will buy the relevant patents later.
In any case, if you make money using somebody else's intellectual property without their permission, you better spend some of it on Vaseline, yes...
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http://theness.com/neurologica... [theness.com]
http://www.npr.org/sections/th... [npr.org]
https://geneticliteracyproject... [geneticlit...roject.org]
https://skeptics.stackexchange... [stackexchange.com]
I would at least recommend an excerpt from The Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast about Monsanto myths:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Sunlight (Score:2)
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I don't know about you but I don't put dish soap [walmartimages.ca] on my tomatoes.
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Seriously a light concentration of dish soap will help you wash away aphids nicely without any toxic residue.
Get you a ripe one (Score:2)
flavor? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm more interested in work being done to bring back flavor in tomatoes [theverge.com], which for some time now have been selected for looks rather than taste.
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On what planet does mother nature not allow min/maxing or mono-cultures? Hippies rant about them, but still get their calories from mono-cultured grains.
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Here's an exercise for you.
Grow a tomato plant. When you have large, hard, green tomatoes, pick a few and put them in a brown paper bag.
Eat those tomatoes when they ripen. Compare them to tomatoes which ripen on the vine. As well, hold onto a tomato picked at optimal ripeness, and a tomato picked when green; time how long before each begins to soften, wrinkle, and rot.
You want tasty tomatoes? Live closer to the farm.
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They already found it [businessinsider.com]. Grocery stores don't care.
Recently, an industrial grower told Klee what he sees as the Garden Gem’s flaw: It’s a bit small—about 50 grams. (Some very large tomatoes reach a weight of 250 grams.) A small tomato entails incrementally higher labor costs, because it requires a few more plucks per pound.
Tomato growers are open to growing better-tasting varieties in principle, but only if they get paid more for it. Supermarkets, on the other hand, insist that shoppers only care about price. And can you blame them? After decades of eating tomatoes that taste like wet paper towels, no one thinks tomatoes are worth much.
I saw this movie (Score:4, Funny)
The perfect Tomato is.... (Score:2)
NOT on my salad... Where I don't "hate" them.... What am I saying, I hate raw tomatoes in all forms, salads, sandwiches you name it.
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I bet you even hate the tomatoes in your ketchup! Tomato hater!
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Ketchup is cooked.... I like ketchup, pizza, even tomato soup or sundried tomatoes mixed in my pasta... Heck, I even like tomato chunks in hot soups (as long as they are cooked). But RAW tomatoes? You can have mine... PLEASE take mine....
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Fellow tomato oddball here: raw tomatoes bad, cooked, sun dried or in sauces good.
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I'm with you... I love anything Tomato, as long as it's cooked. Sun dried tomatos? yum... Sauces, diced, canned, etc... ? Yum... Catsup? well, that's mostly just corn syrop, vinegar, and spices, but it's fine in moderation.
But raw tomato? no thanks. I've tried many, including those where I'm told their fantastic, and they just don't sit well. I'll eat them if served to be polite, but I'd rather not.
That's an awful lot of trouble to go to... (Score:1)
... for something im just going to throw in the trash.
An example of a bad title (Score:3)
The title of the Nature article is: "Fixing the tomato: CRISPR edits correct plant-breeding snafu".
Contrary to what the titles says, scientists are not "perfecting" the tomato in that they are trying to correct for a combination of two mutations by using CRISPR. The mutations are present because of a previous attempt at cross-breeding a wild tomato species with a commercial one.
Fixed it for you. (Score:2)
Fixed it for you.
If that fruit still has any passing resemblance to a real tomato, it will be removed in the next round of gene editing.
That would be Greaaaat ... (Score:2)
Oh, wonderful. More tomatoes that are designer-made to generate higher yields for farmers. And just when I thought a supermarket tomato taste had hit rock bottom, they move the goalposts. Obviously, there has been a hue and cry from the grocery consumers of the planet ... they said, as if from one voice:
"Hey, farmers! I want a tomato that tastes more cardboard. The last one I ate, I could still detect a trace of tomato.
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What reason do you have for believing that these genetic changes will reduce taste?
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Fixed it for you and BTW you would make tons of cash in the process if you ran it properly.
I think we all are nervous (Score:2)
On the other hand, if they increase production and yields but a majority of it is wasted because the product expires and there isn't enough financing to ship it to starving countries (kinda like the situation the US is already in), that would be bad.
On the other other hand if they change the genetics and the plants end up turning everyone into zombies that would be bad
On the o
I would be more worried about monocultures (Score:3)
Perfect? (Score:2)
Keeps forever because it contains even more water than normal tomatoes. In consequence of that, doesn't taste of much. Cube shaped for more efficient storage.
Buyer Beware (Score:4, Insightful)
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Apples are now a disaster. I haven't had a decent apple in years. Some are almost like biting into wood. Few have decent flavor. .... Go in a grocery store and try to find a really tart apple. Good luck.
I wouldn't describe a Red Delicious as woody. Mealy would be more accurate. And the flavor is not good. Granny Smith would be woody but they are tart. Red Delicious is the absolute worst apple, bred for long keeping and appearance and probably remains the best seller. There are newer boutique varieties (Honeycrisp?) that I haven't tried due to price but here in the Midwest we get Jonathan and Jonagold which I enjoy.
This is not the perfect tomato. (Score:2)
The perfect tomato would be one that would actually grow well in a planter on my deck and would slug any squirrels that come near it. If it can get past those requirements, it should also taste great.
Commercial tomatoes (Score:3)
Commercial tomatoes are crap in general. Hard as a rock, tasteless, and generally mealy textured fruits. The only good tomato is a home grown one, and they do grow well in a wide variety of climates in hundreds of breeds. I live in Yuma Arizona and it is hot as hell here and I can still grow tomatoes almost year round.
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Tomatoes love the heat, they are from places with longer summers than Arizona. But tomatoes like some humidity too, which can be resolved with frequent watering or a green house depending on your climate.
I can speak from experience here that tomatoes grow just fine in Michigan too. Warm humid summers there are fine. To extend the growing season a bit, we put wall-o-water around them in the early season to keep the spring frost off the young plants. Once summer hits they take off and it's hard to find enough
We get the tomatoes that we deserve (Score:2)
Just outside the airport in Bologna, Italy, there used to be a huge billboard showing just a tomato resting atop an outstretched hand. The text said:
FOR EACH EUROPEAN COUNTRY, THE TOMATO THAT IT DESERVES
I think that's what we've been getting, and I hate it!
Troll Articla (Score:2)
I already have perfect tomatoes (Score:2)
I grow them in my Hydroponics bay.
Leave them alone please. I don't want chemical side affects from your immature understanding...childlike actually of proteins and biological science from all you PhD's out there.
What could possibly go wrong? (Score:2)