About This Project

Global warming and population growth challenge us to not only increase global production of nutritious foods but also to ensure food system security and adaptability. Tomatoes, the world's most popular vegetable, are heat-sensitive, which limits their growth in many regions globally. By identifying traits that underlie tomato heat tolerance, we can select cultivars better suited for growth in hot environments. This project will develop a novel method to characterize the tomato heat tolerance.

Ask the Scientists

What is the context of this research?

Fresh market tomato production is often limited to few regions, such as in the USA where two-thirds of production occur in California and Florida. This has resulted in long supply chains in which tomatoes ripen while in transit to consumers, providing fruits with lower perceived quality. Furthermore, long supply chains can be susceptible to novel disruptions such as the Sars-Cov19 global pandemic and may not be sustainable or profitable as climate change reduces tomato production in many areas now considered ideal due to increasing heat exposure. Adopting more heat tolerant tomato varieties would help bolster local production in hot environments, reducing the need for lengthy supply chains while meeting increasing consumer demand for local foods.

What is the significance of this project?

Traditionally, identification of heat tolerance in tomatoes and development of new varieties rely on screening trials and breeding programs. Both processes can be costly, labor-, and time-intensive. By developing a modification of a temperature-ramp leaf electrolytic leakage assay (Ilík et al 2018) in conjunction with ongoing cultivar screening trials and tomato physiology experiments we aim to develop a rapid, integrated method of heat resistance screening for tomatoes, thereby setting the stage for increased tomato production in heat-stress prone environments globally.

What are the goals of the project?

The goals of our project are: 1) Execute of proof-of-concept trial that will use common laboratory equipment rather than a costly proprietary platform to quantify critical temperature thresholds (T*) in tomato leaves and test for correlations between T* and yield of cultivars used in prior and concurrent screening trials; 2) determine the metabolomic basis of differing T* between tomato cultivars with known differences in heat resistance and yield; and 3) test for associations between T*, other physiological traits, and yield in field-grown tomatoes to assess the viability of T* as a general screening tool. These goals will be accomplished with a series of growth chamber and field trials using tomato cultivars we have grown in prior screening trials and heat stress related experiments.