UNIVERSITY PARK, Pa. -- One of the largest tomato genetics and breeding programs in the United States is getting ready to bear fruit, but Majid Foolad cautions it will be a few years before Penn State tomatoes will be available to the public.

"We still get regular calls from people asking when they can buy our plants or seed," says the plant genetics professor, who presided over the planting of 32,000 experimental tomato plants on about 12 acres this summer at Penn State's Russell E. Larson Agricultural Research Center at Rock Springs, nine miles southwest of the University Park campus. "Ever since early reports about our program were published a few years ago, we have received a lot of interest from the public."

What makes Foolad's tomatoes special is their lycopene content. Penn State tomatoes have two to three times as much of the antioxidant believed to ward off cancer and other maladies than other tomatoes. In particular, lycopene consumption has been associated with reduced incidence of cancers of the digestive tract and with a lower heart attack risk.

Lycopene is a compound that imparts red color to fruits. It is abundant in tomatoes, with smaller amounts found in watermelon and pink grapefruit. It is readily absorbed by the human body in processed foods such as tomato sauce, says Foolad. Evidence suggests that lycopene is twice as effective in neutralizing free radicals, which may damage the body's cells, as the better-known antioxidant beta-carotene.

"Lycopene is actually oil soluable, not water soluable, so when you eat fresh tomatoes, your body doesn't absorb as much lycopene as it does when you eat tomato sauce," he says. "If you perhaps add some olive oil, it will help make the lycopene more available."

Penn State tomatoes are being bred to be resistant to early blight and late blight -- diseases that ruin up to 30 percent of Pennsylvania's tomato crop each year. "In Pennsylvania, early blight occurs in tomato fields almost every year," says Foolad, who started the tomato genetics research program shortly after he arrived at Penn State in 1994. " Fortunately, late blight doesn't break out as frequently, but when it does it is much more devastating than early blight. For instance, in the summer of 2004, which was unusually cool and wet, late blight was confirmed in at least 26 Pennsylvania counties and I know of growers who just plowed their tomato fields under because late blight had wiped out their crops.

"We have developed tomatoes with strong resistance to early blight, and currently we are introducing late blight resistance into these plants."

But selecting genes for these traits takes years of cross-breeding desirable plants and meticulous record keeping. "It is likely that the university will patent the Penn State Tomato," says Foolad, who has been contacted by seed companies interested in marketing the variety. "It is safe to say that within five years, we will be able to release both fresh market and processing tomatoes with high lycopene and disease resistance."

Ironically, Foolad found the ingredients for the improved strain deep in the tomato's past. He started with wild seeds from the gene banks maintained at the C. M. Rick Tomato Genetics Resource Center at the University of California, Davis, and the U.S. Department of select the traits of interest, we have been able to develop genotypes suitable for growing in Pennsylvania and other northeastern states.

"We screened more than 300 wild tomato accessions in the first few years," adds Foolad. "We evaluated them for blight resistance, high lycopene content and other desirable characteristics suitable for production in Pennsylvania. As a tomato geneticist, I knew where the sources of desirable genes were -- I was certain we were not going to find them in the cultivated species."

But Foolad admits he wasn't sure that he would find the high lycopene genes in the wild species. "Nobody knew -- it had not been reported anywhere else in the history of tomatoes," he says. "There are 30,000 to 35,000 genes in tomatoes. We have been mixing and matching genes for several years, trying to get the best combinations. When you are dealing with so many genes, you have to go through many trials and do crosses and backcrosses again and again and again. Another challenge is to develop a record-keeping system to handle years and years of in-depth information."

Initially, Foolad concentrated on developing cherry tomatoes with high lycopene and blight resistance. However, he later on expanded his program to include processing and larger fresh-market tomatoes. " Eventually we will be able to release high-lycopene, blight-resistant tomatoes tailored to grow in Pennsylvania's climate in all the major types, including cherry, grape, plum and round fresh-market and processing tomatoes," he says. "Maybe before too long, when people think of Penn State, they will think of blue and white -- and red." EDITORS: Contact Majid Foolad at 814-865-5408 or by e-mail at mrf5@psu.edu.

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Writer/Editor: Jeff Mulhollem Penn State Ag Sciences News Office 814-863-2719