Research 

Plant breeders are challenged with sustaining global crop improvements. Is there a limit to crop yield?

Our lab is addressing this question using three favorite plants: tomatoes, Lisianthus and autotetraploid roses.  By integrating in a single web-based platform a broad germplasm base, deep ontology defined phenotypes, and multiple genome sequences we identify genes and mechanisms that dictate crop productivity.

Our integrated breeding efforts unite classical and genomics assisted methods to demonstrate that yield barriers are only there to be broken.

You can login to the Zamir Lab data in Phenome Networks as a guest:

Go to https://unity.phenome-networks.com/
Your Username: guest@huji.com
password: 123456

Genes that Make Tomatoes 

International Tomato Genome Sequencing Project

The tomato genome was published in Nature on May 31, 2012, culminating years of work by the Tomato Genome Consortium, a multi-national team of scientists from 14 countries.

Selected Publications

1. Eshed Y and D Zamir (1995) An introgression line population of Lycopersicon pennellii in the cultivated tomato enables the identification and fine mapping of yield associated QTL. Genetics 141:1147-1162.
2. Zamir D. (2001) Improving plant breeding with exotic genetic libraries. Nature Review Genetics 2:983-989.
3. Gur A and D Zamir (2004) Unused genetic variation can lift yield barriers in plant breeding. PLoS Biology 2: e245.
4. Fridman E, C Fernando, YS Liu, AR Fernie and D Zamir (2004) Zooming in on a quantitative trait for tomato yield using interspecific introgressions. Science 305: 1786-1789.
5. Semel Y, Y Nissenbaum, N Menda, M Zinder, N Issman, U Krieger, T Pleban, Z Lippman, A Gur and D Zamir (2006) Overdominant QTL for yield and fitness in tomato. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 103:12981–12986.
6. Lippman Z and D Zamir (2007) Heterosis: revisiting the magic. Trends in Genetics 23: 60-66.
7. Zachary Lippman, Yaniv Semel and Dani Zamir (2007) An integrated view of quantitative trait variation using tomato interspecific introgression lines. Current Opinion in Genetics and Development 17: 545-552.
8. Zachary B. Lippman, Oded Cohen, John Alvarez, Muhammad Abu-Abied, Irena Pekker, Ilan Paran, Yuval Eshed, and Dani Zamir (2008). The making of a compound inflorescence in tomato and related nightshades. PLoS Biology 18;6(11):e288.
9. Uri Krieger, Zachary B. Lippman and Dani Zamir (2010) The flowering gene SINGLE FLOWER TRUSS drives heterosis for yield in tomato. Nature Genetics 42:459-63.
10. The Tomato Genome Consortium (2012) The tomato genome sequence provides insights into fleshy fruit evolution. Nature (in press).

Current Members of the Group

Dani Zamir
Researcher

Tzili Pleban
Technician

Elad Bensel
Bioinformatician

Itai Ofner
Ph.D. Student

Itay Zemach
Ph.D. Student

Josef Fisher
Ph.D. Student

Kfir Bandel
Ph.D. Student

Amit Koch
M.Sc. Student

Matan Oved
M.Sc. Student