Year: 2025
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: Crop improvement is a continuous process that involves the systematic development of new plant varieties with enhanced traits, like improved resistance to biotic and abiotic stresses, increased yields and better nutrition quality. This process is especially important in the context of climate change and a shift to sustainable farming practices. This ongoing effort combines traditional breeding techniques with modern biotechnological tools. The present work highlights some aspects of the application of new biotechnological tools to tomato breeding, particularly, the combination of transcriptomic analysis used to identify genes of interest and functional validation of these genes using new genomic techniques. The purpose of this study was understanding the mechanisms that drive tomato response to phytoplasma infection. The approach involved performing RNA-seq on tomato varieties with contrasting responses to phytoplasma infection. For this, the infection rate and phytoplasma load of the tomato plants of different varieties was measured by real-time PCR. Gene expression profiles of different tomato varieties were done by RNA sequencing of 3 individual plants of each variety. Some differentially expressed genes, found by RNA sequencing, were further tested by RT-qPCR. Possible approaches for functional analysis of some genes of interest are discussed. This work emphasizes the potential of a transcriptomics approach in identifying genes associated with desirable traits and highlights the importance of their functional confirmation using new genomic techniques.
Language: English
Subfield: Plant Science
Domain: Life Sciences
SDG: Zero hunger
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W7204704780