Tomato: Breeding and Genomics

Abstract

Tomato is an important vegetable of the human diet. In tomatoes, through conventional breeding methods, many cultivars with desirable traits have been developed. With the advancement in sequencing technologies combined with reducing cost per sample, high-throughput genotyping platforms and bioinformatics pipelines have revolutionized tomato improvement. After the tomato genome sequencing in 2012, thousands of cultivated and wild species have been sequenced with respect to studies on population structure, genetic diversity, high-density maps and structural variants analysis so on. Now, genomics-assisted research would aim to discover of QTLs/genes and associated single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) markers by genome-wide association studies (GWAS) using high-throughput genotyping (SNP array or genotyping-by-sequencing) for rapid breeding. Moreover, genome editing and genomics selection tools would increase breeding efficiency and higher genetic gain in tomatoes.