STRAWBERRIES could be about to get tastier. Food technologists have identified the enzymes and genes that help give the fruit its distinctive flavour and plan to use this to produce extra-delicious transgenic varieties.
Today鈥檚 supermarket strawberries are large and last a long time. But as Wilfried Schwab from the Technical University in Munich, Germany, and his colleagues have confirmed, breeding for these traits has come at a cost: cultivated strawberry varieties produce different flavour compounds than their wild relatives.
They have now identified the genes and three enzymes in strawberries that produce one of these flavour compounds, called 4-hydroxy-2,5-dimethyl-3(2H)-furanone, or HDMF. The researchers hope to genetically modify strawberries to produce more of the chemical which, it is said, imparts a caramel-like, sweet, fruity and burnt pineapple-like flavour. 鈥淲e have already generated transgenic strawberries in order to prove the function of the enzymes, and they have a modified aroma,鈥� says Schwab, who presented his work to the American Chemical Society meeting in Philadelphia this week.
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