Abstract: In recent years, breeding work and planting techniques pursuing high yield and disease resistance, and post-harvest treatments such as low-temperature storage have caused a great decline in tomato flavor quality. How to improve the flavor quality of tomato is an urgent problem to be solved. The flavor quality of tomato mainly involves sweet and sour taste and aroma, which is closely related to sugars, organic acids and volatile flavor substances in the fruit, and losses of volatile flavor substances are the key factor causing the deterioration of tomato flavor quality. In this paper, the flavor composition of tomato, the synthesis pathways of tomato flavor compounds and the factors affecting tomato flavor are systematically reviewed in order to provide theoretical guidance for improving the flavor quality of tomato.

Key words: tomato; quality; flavor substances; characteristic flavor; biosynthetic pathway; storage