TomaZinco - Producing a high value and functional zinc-biofortified tomato

Zinc is an essential element for living organisms that plays a role as a cofactor in many proteins. For that reason, zinc deficiency in arable soils is a severe worldwide problem that affects crop yield and quality and, consequently, human health. To counteract zinc limitation, plants developed sophisticated molecular mechanisms to control tightly zinc uptake and distribution. These strategies depend on the expression of zinc transporters and zinc chelators, involved in zinc uptake and translocation, respectively. The activation of these genes rely on the activity of the highly conserved F-bZIP subfamily of transcription factors.

Tomato is an economically important crop fruit that is affected severely by zinc deficiency. A synergy between CIBIO-InBIO and INIAV was established to create a knowledge-based solution for improved zinc-use-efficiency in tomato plants by optimizing key transcription factors activity.

TomaZinco goals are to obtain tomato plants more tolerant to zinc deficiency and displaying zinc-biofortified fruits. Two parallel plans will be implemented:

1) search for modifications in the genomic sequence of key genes within a Portuguese tomato seed collection;

2) modulating the tomato key genes by genome editing technology.