'Plant Breeding: Sustaining the Future' Abstracts of the XVIth EUCARPIA Congress, Edinburgh, Scotland, 10-14 September 2001 IMPROVING THE NUTRITIONAL CONTENT OF TOMATO: REPROGRAMMING FLAVONOID BIOSYNTHESIS S. COLLIVER, A. BOVY, G. COLLINS, S. MUIR, S. ROBINSON, R. DeVOS, M. VERHOEYEN Unilever Research, Colworth House, Sharnbrook, Bedford, MK44 1LQ, England

Flavonoids are a diverse group of phenolic secondary metabolites that occur naturally in many plants and therefore form an integral component of the human diet.  Many of the compounds belonging to this group are potent antioxidants in vitro and epidemiological studies suggest a direct correlation between high flanonoid biosynthesis in chosen crops may provide new raw materials that have the potential to be used as ‘functional foods’, beneficial to human health.  Using genetic engineering, we have investigated the role of several of the enzymatic steps of tomato flavonoid biosynthesis.  Furthermore, we have generated several tomato lines with significantly altered flavonoid content, most notably with an up to 78-fold increase in total fruit flavonoids.