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BBC: "The tomatoes at the forefront of a food revolution"

According to the editors at UK news agency BBC< tomatoes are at the forefront of a food revolution. "At first glance, it looked like any other plant that can be found growing in the corners of offices or on the windowsills of university laboratories. But this particular tomato plant, grown in 2018 at the University of Minnesota, was different. The bushy tangle of elongated leaves and small red fruits were characteristic of a wild species of tomato plant native to Peru and Ecuador called Solanum pimpinellifolium, also known as the red currant tomato. A closer inspection, however, made the plant's uniqueness more apparent," they dive into the tomato research. 

This particular plant was more compact, with fewer branches but more fruits than the wild tomato. Its fruits were also a little darker than was usual, a sign of increased lycopene — an antioxidant linked to a lower risk of cancer and heart disease. It had, in fact, been designed that way. The plant was created by geneticist Tomas Cermak and his colleagues with the use of Crispr gene editing, a Nobel Prize-winning technology which works like a "cut and paste" tool for genetic material. The technique is now revolutionizing agriculture and helping create crops for the future.

Cermak himself is on a mission to find a perfect tomato, one that would be easy to cultivate, nutritious and tasty, yet more adaptable to a changing climate. "The ideal plant would be resistant to all forms of stress — heat, cold, salt and drought, as well as to pests," he says.

Climate change spells trouble for many crops, and tomatoes are no exception. Tomatoes don't like heat, growing best between 18C (64F) and 25C (77F). Cross either side of that threshold and things start going downhill: pollen doesn't form properly, the flowers don't form into berries in the way they should. Once the mercury goes over 35C (95F), yields begin to collapse. A 2020 study showed that by mid-21st Century up to 66% of land in California historically used for growing tomatoes may no longer have temperatures appropriate for the crop. Other modelling studies suggest that by 2050 large swaths of land in Brazil, sub-Saharan Africa, India and Indonesia will also no longer have optimal climate for cultivation of tomatoes.

Read the complete article at www.bbc.com.

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