Higher Yield and Fruit Quality of a Solanum pennellii Introgression Line

Nowadays, the growing interest for well-being, is influencing the choices of consumers addressing them to eat functional foods that have high antioxidant potential. Cultivated tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L.) is an important source of antioxidants, such as ascorbic acid (vitamin C), carotenoids and phenolic compounds. Epidemiological results confirm that these antioxidant molecules are associated with a reduced risk of cancer, inflammation and cardiovascular diseases. Recently, one Introgression Line (IL) population deriving from Solanum pennellii has been exploited to identify favorable alleles that can improve fruit quality traits in commercial varieties, including antioxidants content. The aim of this work was to evaluate growth, final yields and the content of nutraceutical compounds at the ripe red fruit stage in one sub-line coded R182 which carries only a small region (448 Kbp) of wild genome in the cultivated genetic background (M82). Analyses carried out on R182 and on the parental line M82, demonstrated that the sub-line showed better performances in terms of yield and fruit qualitative traits most considered in industry. Indeed, higher yield (+28.99%), content of soluble sugars (+34.64%) and titratable acidity (+78.94%) were demonstrated for R182 compared to M82. Also, for the nutritional traits analyzed, an increase in the content of phenols (+ 69.96%), ascorbic acid (+ 48.55%), carotenoids (+ 29.66%), lycopene (+ 31.22%) and β-carotene (+31.67%) was observed. Therefore, it is possible to assert that the sub-line R182 may be considered as a good candidate to be used as parental genotype in breeding programs.