US scientists have bred a new tomato said to have an improved, sweeter taste, with qualities that will also boost yields.
The new product is said to be “mouth-wateringly sweet” and comes just weeks after Indian researchers unveiled a GM tomato that stays fresh for three times longer than usual.
But the US product was created using 'hybrid vigour', a process in which the crossing of two genetically different plants produces a hybrid with superior qualities.
During the research, scientists looked at a collection of 5,000 plants, each of which had a single mutation in a single gene that causes defects in various aspects of tomato growth such as fruit size and leaf shape, reports the Nature Genetics journal.
The end product had one flawed and one normal copy of a gene that makes a flowering protein, Florigen, leading to increased yields.
The hybrid plant had a 60 per cent bigger yield in one case but, where usually the more fruit produced the less sweet the taste, this plant produced equally high yields and taste quality.
Researcher Dr Zach Lippman of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York said: “This discovery has potential to have a significant impact on both the billion-dollar tomato industry, as well as agricultural practices designed to get the most yield from other flowering crops.
“Mutant plants are usually thrown away because of the notion that mutations would have negative effects on growth.
“Our results indicate that breeding with hybrid mutations could prove to be a powerful new way to increase yields, not only in tomato, but all crops.”
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