A single locus confers tolerance to continuous light and allows substantial yield increase in tomato

作者：Velez Ramirez Aaron I^*; van Ieperen Wim; Vreugdenhil Dick; van Poppel Pieter M J A; Heuvelink Ep; Millenaar Frank F

来源：Nature Communications, 2014, 5(1): 4549.

DOI：10.1038/ncomms5549

An important constraint for plant biomass production is the natural day length. Artificial light allows for longer photoperiods, but tomato plants develop a detrimental leaf injury when grown under continuous light-a still poorly understood phenomenon discovered in the 1920s. Here, we report a dominant locus on chromosome 7 of wild tomato species that confers continuous light tolerance. Genetic evidence, RNAseq data, silencing experiments and sequence analysis all point to the type III light harvesting chlorophyll a/b binding protein 13 (CAB-13) gene as a major factor responsible for the tolerance. In Arabidopsis thaliana, this protein is thought to have a regulatory role balancing light harvesting by photosystems I and II. Introgressing the tolerance into modern tomato hybrid lines, results in up to 20% yield increase, showing that limitations for crop productivity, caused by the adaptation of plants to the terrestrial 24-h day/night cycle, can be overcome.

• 出版日期2014-8