He has developed several new transgenic tomatoes in almost half the time. Traditional breeding requires selecting a tomato species that has a desirable trait, such as early ripening, and crossing it with another tomato species that has a good genetic background. The desired result is an earlier ripening tomato that makes it to the market sooner. Then, using molecular tools, we reengineer the gene, confirm it's what we want, and introduce it into a plant so it becomes part of that plant's genome. The plant then possesses the new trait.
Traditional breeding allows transferring hundreds of genes in a relatively random manner.
Good or bad traits are sometimes haphazardly passed along to the new plant. With genetically engineered plants, however, scientists know exactly what's going into the plant and what traits will be expressed by the transformed plant. If the season is right, you may find a brilliant red tomato sitting on a table in Mattoo's office. The tomato might look like it was just picked, but chances are it's one of his transgenic tomatoes that has been sitting there for weeks. In collaboration with a Purdue University scientist in West Lafayette, Indiana, Mattoo has developed a novel means for slowing ripening by introducing a gene that controls only this function.