Transgenic plants exhibiting modified carbohydrate metabolism.

摘要

The increase in concentration of sucrose and hexoses or other low molecular weight metabolites during the exposure of plant tissue to low temperatures is a widespread phenomenon. Sweetened plant material, however, becomes unsuitable for processing because of the Maillard reaction between reducing sugars and amino acids. The subject invention is directed at solving this problem. The subject invention concerns a method for reducing plant material's ability for producing sugars which can participate in Maillard reactions or precursors of said sugars, wherein at least one nucleotide sequence is introduced into the plant material, said nucleotide sequence expressing a product capable of reducing the amount of UDPG available for conversion to sucrose and wherein the reduction in sugar production occurs upon application of an external stimulus. The subject invention is also directed at a recombinant plant material exhibiting reduced sucrose formation characterised by the presence of at least one nucleotide sequence encoding at least a part of anti-sense pyrophosphate fructosephosphate phosphotransferase (PFP) mRNA, said part being sufficient to cause inhibition of production of pyrophosphate fructosephosphate phosphotransferase (PFP) after application of an external stimulus.