Rapid breeding of parthenocarpic tomato plants using CRISPR/Cas9

TLDR

Parthenocarpy is a valuable trait in horticultural crops, enhancing industrial uses and eating quality. The study demonstrates a CRISPR/Cas9‑based breeding strategy to rapidly produce parthenocarpic tomato plants, with potential application across cultivars and other crops. The authors optimized CRISPR/Cas9 to induce high‑efficiency somatic mutations in the SlIAA9 gene, achieving up to 100 % mutation rates in T0 plants. Deep sequencing confirmed no off‑target mutations, while regenerated mutants displayed seedless fruit and altered leaf morphology, and the homozygous T1 generation exhibited a severe parthenocarpic phenotype, validating the approach.

Abstract

Abstract Parthenocarpy in horticultural crop plants is an important trait with agricultural value for various industrial purposes as well as direct eating quality. Here, we demonstrate a breeding strategy to generate parthenocarpic tomato plants using the CRISPR/Cas9 system. We optimized the CRISPR/Cas9 system to introduce somatic mutations effectively into SlIAA9 —a key gene controlling parthenocarpy—with mutation rates of up to 100% in the T0 generation. Furthermore, analysis of off-target mutations using deep sequencing indicated that our customized gRNAs induced no additional mutations in the host genome. Regenerated mutants exhibited morphological changes in leaf shape and seedless fruit—a characteristic of parthenocarpic tomato. And the segregated next generation (T1) also showed a severe phenotype associated with the homozygous mutated genome. The system developed here could be applied to produce parthenocarpic tomato in a wide variety of cultivars, as well as other major horticultural crops, using this precise and rapid breeding technique.