| Abstract Detail
Emerging Model Species for Developmental, Evolutionary and Functional Analyses van der Knaap, Esther [1]. Variation in tomato fruit shape: a tool to understand organ formation. Crop species differ substantially in plant morphology compared to their wild relatives. For fruit bearing crops such as tomato, the differences are most dramatically displayed in fruit morphological characters such as size and shape. Whereas fruit of wild relatives are small and round, cultivated tomato carries fruit of much larger size and variable shapes. We have taken an interest to identify the genetic, developmental and molecular basis of this variation as a tool to further the understanding of plant organ formation. We developed a software tool, Tomato Analyzer (Brewer et al. Plant Physiol 141:15-25), to semi-automatically, objectively and quantitatively score fruit shape features such as the ratio of height to width, the angle of the fruit at various positions along its boundary and the degree of indentation at both distal and proximal ends. Using Tomato Analyzer, we mapped fruit shape features in several populations that were segregating for shape. One of the pictures emerging from these studies is that the major loci controlling elongated fruit shape are found at three locations in the genome: sun, ovate and fs8.1, and additional loci playing minor roles. We also fine mapped and subsequently cloned the gene underlying one of these loci, sun. Our ongoing studies are aimed at determining the distribution of the sun allele in tomato germplasm and to further understand the role of the gene in fruit shape and organ formation.
This work is funded by NSF grant DBI 0227541
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Related Links:
http://www.oardc.ohio-state.edu/vanderknaap/
Laboratory webpage and Tomato Analyzer program
1 - The Ohio State University, Horticulture and Crop Science, 1680 Madison Ave, Wooster, OH, 44691, USA
Keywords:
tomato
fruit shape
genetics.
Presentation Type: Symposium or Colloquium Presentation
Session: SY05
Location: Stevens 1/Hilton
Date: Monday, July 9th, 2007
Time: 11:30 AM
Number: SY05007
Abstract ID:1414 |
