Abstract
Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum) has been an excellent model system for analysis of plant mechanism, which cannot easily be studied in Arabidopsis or rice, such as fruit physiology and secondary metabolites accumulation. Mutational approaches have been highly instrumental for the study of the genetic and molecular bases of traits. To obtain information on the genetic mechanism of fruit ripening, we constructed mutation libraries induced by irradiation with gamma-ray and accelerated heavy-ion. We used a determinate miniature cultivar Micro-Tom, which is suitable for large mutagenesis because of its small size and rapid life cycle.
We found a mutant whose leaf color was pale. The mutant also showed pale surface color of the fruit, but there no significant differences between the mutant and WT in the content of carotenoid and expression level of the genes involved in carotenoid biosynthesis.
