Improving crop sustainability and fresh and processed fruit quality through integrated analyses along the food chain

International audienceWhile million people lack access to food or some nutrients, up to one-third of food is never consumed, especially fruit and vegetables, naturally rich in phytonutrients. Fruit and vegetables waste and loss arise at all steps of the food chain from production to consumption. The access to phytonutrients is also threatened with climate changes that impact both yields and the composition of harvested organs. Finding trade-offs between yield and quality along the food chain appears necessary to improve crop sustainability and to limit losses. Processing tomato is a good target to address these challenges: it is a major crop and an important source of phytonutrients notably phenolic compounds and carotenoids, and it represents an intensive production in terms of water use. Two examples of integrated analyses will be given. First, we will focus on pre-postharvest relationships and the ability of tomatoes to be processed into purees. We investigated fruit quality in response to water supply, genotypes and ripening stage, and we assessed their impact on puree obtained from hot break and cold break processes. We found that fruit growth and quality were weakly impacted by moderate water insufficiency during growth. A reduction of water supply from 100% to 60% of the evapotranspiration strongly impacted plant growth but had little impact on fresh fruit yield and increased the water use efficiency by 20%. Second, we address the accumulation of carotenoids in ripe tomato in response to water insufficiency in two genotypes. A medium water deficit (-0.5 MPa soil water potential while permanent wilting point is estimated at-1,5 MPa) at the beginning of fruit development impacted the fruit composition at maturity. The dry matter contents increased up to 23% while an interaction between genotype and water regime was found for carotenoid contents which may affect tomato health value