ABSTRACT
The tomato belongs to the Solanaceae family which contains a number of economically important crops such as potato, pepper, aubergine and tobacco. The tomato has one of the highest number of exploitable monogenic characteristics amongst cultivated varieties of vegetable. Since 1980, with the arrival of molecular markers, quantitative trait loci can be localised on genetic maps and their individual effects quantified. The tomato was chosen for genome sequencing not only with regard to its well-established position as a model plant for fleshy fruit and for the Solanaceae family but also because it represents the smallest diploid genome for which homozygous inbreds are available. Studies in tomato have illustrated the power of this approach. The size of the tomato genome is 950 Mb and the gene-rich regions represent one quarter of the total size but contain more than 90% of the tomato genes. Tomato and Arabidopsis belong to two botanic families: Solanaceae and Brassicaceae.
