Super veg
Find out more about the food you eat.
To help plant breeders improve the potatoes and tomatoes we eat we need to understand the background to the qualities (e.g. flavour) we are interested in. Below are some of the qualities investigated by EU-SOL and how genes can affect them.
Genes and taste
Most of the complicated chemical processes that take place in a plant (or any living organism) are assisted and controlled in some way by enzymes. What enzymes and hence what chemical processes occur is determined by what enzymes are coded for in the organisms DNA.
For example the reactions that occur in the creation of glucose from carbon dioxide and water are all made possible by enzymes, different versions of these enzymes, found in different plants, may work better or worse, affecting the amount of glucose created and possibly the sweetness of the tomatoes on the plant.
