Scientists Find Genetic Reason Why Store-Bought Tomatoes Taste So Bland

[sl8]

From http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2019/05/13/tasty-store-bought-tomatoes-are-making-a-comeback/#.XOGFWZApC9f

Scientists Find Genetic Reason Why Store-Bought Tomatoes Taste So Bland

By Roni Dengler | May 13, 2019 11:29 pm


(Credit: Fir0002/Flagstaffotos; Wikimedia Commons)

Store-bought tomatoes taste horrifically disgusting — err, bland. Now scientists have discovered a version of a gene that helps give tomatoes their flavor is actually missing in about 93 percent of modern, domesticated varieties. The discovery may help bring flavor back to tomatoes you can pick up in the produce section.

“How many times do you hear someone say that tomatoes from the store just don’t quite measure up to heirloom varieties?” Clifford Weil, program director of the National Science Foundation’s Plant Genome Research Program that supported the work, asked in a press announcement. “This study gets to why that might be the case and shows that better tasting tomatoes appear to be on their way back.”

Domestication Doom

An international team of researchers collected genomic information from 725 cultivated and wild tomatoes and assembled them into a pan-genome — a genome that captures the genetic information of all the varieties. Then they compared the pan-genome to the genome of a domesticated tomato called Heinz 1706. Until now, this tomato genome has served as the representative example of all tomato genomes.

The side-by-side comparison showed that the Heinz 1706 reference genome was missing nearly 5,000 genes that the other tomato varieties have. Many of these lost genes also equipped the plants with defenses against pathogens.

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More at link.

[katmondoo]

1. Tomatoes from Canada seem to have the most flavor and thinner skins

[malaise]

2. Jamaican tomatoes are the absolute best

beautiful flavor - same with our celery.

[pangaia]

33. Will you ship to Up-State NY ?

[malaise]

35. I would if I could

Seriously we reached the market close to 5.30am and our celery vendor was unloading his stuff - you could smell it as he opened the bag - green and beautiful. At this market the vendors are mostly small farmers from the hills on the way to the blue mountains.

[pangaia]

37. Oh, that sounds WONderful !!!

I lived on a farm for 19 years with many people. We ate well. :&gt )

Starting now I can get fresh things at good local markets also. But I am sure n ot as good as in Jamaica !

[malaise]

53. Folks tell me you get really good fresh stuff in some places

in the US so you may well be getting good stuff. Don't feel no way - we have the pesticide scumbags as well.

[TheBlackAdder]

87. It shouldn't be that expensive to ship them from Queens, NY.

[pangaia]

90. Thanks but no thanks.

I grew up in Teaneck...
Nice try though. I

[SoCalDem]

47. I'm putting in my order for guineps

LOADS of them

for the unitiated:

[malaise]

51. Too early

July to September - my paternal grandma had a tree in the backyard but the tree had what we call hairy worms which used to sting. My second sister didn't give a damn - she got those guineps. Funny as I have aged I prefer lychee - should find some in another week - can't wait. I can eat a pound and eat nothing else all damn day
Those lovely peaches from the hills should soon be ready as well. Funny peaches are the cheapest fruit here because most people don't like them. I eat them as is or make pies and stews.

[SoCalDem]

55. When I was a kid, we would go into the jungle and pick them

and sometimes monkeys would snatch them out of our hands ...rascals.. Of course we kids were literally robbing their pantries

[malaise]

57. We ate them all damn day when we were kids

Mom and dad would head overseas and leave us with my favorite aunt and dad's mom. We had a blast. They had every imaginable fruit tree and we were free to run up and down the neighborhood.

[Hekate]

14. Thick skins allow for machine harvesting -- what's a little thing like flavor when compared to ...

...efficiency and lower cost?

Bleah. They bred the flavor right out of them.

[Blue_true]

60. Those tomatoes are grown on hothouses under ideal conditions.

Each plant has an ideal spectrum of light wavelengths from the sun that it responds to, the rest of the wavelengths do nothing for the plant. Optimizing the spectrum of wavelengths that LED light bulbs emit, along with managing optimal temperature and moisture for plants make them grow faster and produce the most flavorful fruit.

[LuvLoogie]

3. For this reason, I often marinate my store bought tomatoes before I use them

in a salad or on a sandwich. Crushed garlic, olive oil, a little lime juice and or red wine vinegar, salt.

It can really make a difference.

[CrispyQ]

4. Thanks for that!

I will spend extra for heirlooms or locally grown tomatoes, but they're usually seasonal. Definitely trying this with the tomato on my counter right now!

[tblue37]

5. I get mine from the garden of a friend. nt

[CrispyQ]

9. The best source!

Many years ago I worked with a group of engineers who had a tomato growing contest in the summer. One boasted of his tomatoes watered with lake water, another used river water, another planted in specially composted soil. Every Friday they would bring in their crop & we would have the makings for sandwiches & salad. And then we'd vote. It was the best summer!

[LuvLoogie]

28. After a couple years hiatus, we are planting tomatoes again this year.

4 varieties: Roma, an heirloom beefsteak, a sweet cherry, a variety called Sun Gold that are a nice soft orange color.

[LuvLoogie]

31. You are welcome.

I do something similar with arugula before I put it on a sandwich. One of my faves is hard salami, munster cheese, and mayo on white bread. I add arugula, but I dress it with olive oil, lemon juice, and salt before hand. Of course a whole package of arugula this way does not last long at our table. I eat it right out of the mixing bowl.

[Codeine]

24. Heck yeah! Everything in the world gets better

with a little olive oil, vinegar, and sea salt.

[lordsummerisle]

77. Do you marinate them whole or cut them up? n/t

[LuvLoogie]

89. Cut up in whatever form I will use them. Slices or wedges.

Chopped for bruschetta.

For salads and sandwiches you don't have to marinate them for very long.

[MagickMuffin]

6. Also hothouse tomatoes don't get enough sun

As a young girl my family lived on 12 acres. We had a huge garden and plenty of tomatoes. Beefsteak are my favorite, they could weigh up to a pound. The flavors of the tomatoes were absolutely the best.

Hothouse tomatoes don't have the sun to ripen their juices. They are also picked green and allowed to "ripen" after being picked.

I found it interesting that they found nearly 5000 missing genes. That's a lot of genes.

[Codeine]

19. Tomatoes have an astonishing number of genes.

The variety they’re referencing has over 31,000 iirc, which is significantly more than we have. Add in the 5,000 or so that are missing in that variety and you get what, 36-37,000 genes? Whackadoo!

[Blue_true]

61. That is changing fast.

Canadian tomatoes are the best in the store. They are grown in hothouses. What plant scientists have discovered is that each plant use a specific segment of solar light wavelengths, simulating that optimal mix using LED light produces close to perfect results for flavor, color, ect.

[DFW]

7. Most of the tomatoes we get here are from local farms or the Med

The tasteless ones are grown in greenhouses over in Holland. They are usually so pink as to be barely identifiable as tomatoes.

[malaise]

36. I agree - the greenhouse tomatoes have no taste

period

[NutmegYankee]

39. They can be tasty if done right.

I've grown tomatoes in the winter under LED lights that were quite good. The thing that suffers is yield.

[malaise]

41. I've never tasted one with real tomato favor

When I think of growing veggies indoors and under lights, I think of that hilarious movie Saving Grace

[NutmegYankee]

44. It's not the method, it's the type.

A bland modern type tomato will suck in taste under any light.

[malaise]

49. You have a point

[womanofthehills]

56. I grow heirloom cherry tomatoes all winter in my south windows

Super sweet. Now I'll be putting them outside and sharing them with the bunnies.

[Blue_true]

63. Actually Malaise.

If the light wavelengths are optimized for the plant, the temperature and humidity set up right and controlled well and the nutrients fed to it controlled well, the fruit will blow your mind, there would be no way to match that growing outside. The problem is the plant science that I described has recently evolved for that and most big commercial hothouses have not updated.

My guess is that in 20 years, 80+% of our food will be grown under hothouse conditions, with conditions fine tuned for the plants being grown.

[malaise]

64. Very Interesting

Sadly I do not expect to be around in 20 years - I am truly ignorant about modern planting processes but I don't like the greenhouse tomatoes available here

[Blue_true]

70. A big problem with hothouse tomatoes is how the producer handles the harvest cycle.

If the producer is a major supplier, it likely harvests in bulk and use methods like gassing the fruit to make color uniform across the harvest. Then the producer ships the tomatoes, which is another problem area because they may be held at too cold a temperature. Then the tomatoes arrive at the market, another problem area.

There are so many things that a person can do with produce. For example, I can take bananas and set conditions for them where they stay at one state for two weeks, or I can take navel oranges and enhance their flavor by what I do with them. All the stuff is natural, no chemicals, I just take advantage of natural processes happening with the fruit to get what I want.

My guess is the hothouse tomatoes that you buy were ruined well before you bought them and there is nothing that can be done to improve them. If they had been handled in an optimal manner before they got to you, then you could enhance their flavor by putting them in a towel or a partially open plastic bag and keeping the room temp at around 70 degrees.

[malaise]

72. Thanks for the details

We got some lovely tasty ones at the market yesterday

[Blue_true]

62. You are right. If the LED light wavelengths are optimized for a tomato plant

the fruit turn out perfect.

I am surprised that DFW is getting way sub optimal tomatoes from Holland, the Dutch normally are on the cutting edge with technology.

[NutmegYankee]

80. Could just be economics.

I used a PAR meter to measure my light levels and then set up a on/off cycle that gave me a minimum daylight integral of 24. But this required an 18 hour on cycle for lights that sucked down 300 Watts. I did it one season with Glacier tomatoes and then one season with some new dwarf styles and then stopped because it wasn’t worth the extra cost in electricity. I shifted to only using the lights for seedlings in Spring.

[Blue_true]

81. All good points. nt

[Beakybird]

8. I have a pet mosquito I'm bringing up as a vegetarian.

It won't eat the tomatoes from the store.

[wasupaloopa]

10. If science would fucking leave our food alone it would taste good. I fear they will replace the

seeds with their franken food seeds.

I use to work in produce in the sixties before science started fucking around with food. You could smell and taste a see vegetables that made you hungry for them.


I buy at farmer's markets when available and the tomatoes actually deteriorate if you don'r eat them soon. But the scientific kind never rot in weeks and weeks. They are not food.

[mopinko]

11. they did all that the old fashioned way.

[NutmegYankee]

17. There are no marketed GMO tomatoes. This was old fashioned breeding.

The tomatoes were bred to hold up to commercial harvesting and shipping.

[NRaleighLiberal]

21. Exactly.

[NutmegYankee]

38. You get back from your White flower visit?

I stopped there to pickup some tomatoes I didn't grow from seed Friday, but wasn't feeling great and didn't stay longer than needed to checkout.

[NRaleighLiberal]

40. Had a super time! Gave three one hour talks, two on Fri, one on Sat -

We were put up at the Litchfield Inn, had a great scone and coffee at Toast, and dinners at the marketplace (used to be a jail), and at the corner - took a few long walks through the town - gorgeous, PRICEY historic houses. So much in bloom. Drove to Wickford RI for lunch, then on to Eastham to say with family on the Cape for a week....

[malaise]

42. The moment I saw this thread

I thought of you

[NRaleighLiberal]

43. .

[Blue_true]

66. Exactly and in doing so, scientists purposely eliminated characteristics that made the tomatoes

more perishable.

I am an avid recreational tomato grower. I mark each of my plants and keep a log on each plant. At harvest time, I save seeds of fruit that came from particular plants, labeling each seed pack with the plant log id. I am able to manipulate characteristics over a couple seasons. Commercial plant scientist would blow me away, if people are getting tasteless tomatoes, there is a reason for that which makes commercial sense for the producer.

I suggest that people buy tomatoes from a health food store that sells fruit and vegetables. The better ones sell produce from farmers that use natural selection methods to grow the best fruit and produce.

[Codeine]

20. If science stopped "fucking" with our food

lots of people would have starved to death.

[Turin_C3PO]

45. Sometimes

the anti-science vibe on this site rivals Republican anti-science beliefs. It’s discouraging that some presumably well-educated liberals would hold science in disdain.

[Codeine]

58. It's discouraging.

I’m anything but educated, but even I understand some basic principles of biology and the natural world. Others - some much more educated and intelligent than me - seem to take a perverse pride in rejecting even those simple facts.

[Blue_true]

69. Good point, but I don't fully agree.

I think that if more producers used companion plants and till-less agriculture, we would still have abundant food and that food would be flavorful and nutrient dense.

Next time you buy a store bought tomato, cut one open and scrape out the seed amalgam, that says a lot about the history of the tomato. Many commercial tomatoes are harvested just as they start to show red and gassed to produce a red color. Although they may look fine on the outside, the seed amalgam tells the story about what happened because it does not respond measurably to the gassing, preserving indications of an immature tomato fruit.

Another thing that commercial producers do is refrigerate fruit to cold. That damages even properly grown and harvested fruit. Once fruit is held at too cold a temperature, it never recovers. For tomatoes, the seed amalgam and the texture of the inner flesh of the tomato give the information that it was refrigerated too cold then allowed to warm up at the market. Supermarkets are part of the problem, every perishable thing go into one big cooler that has no differentiation for types of produce that should not be held at a low temperature.

[Quixote1818]

84. Thank you. nt

[Act_of_Reparation]

91. Question:

Do you think Republicans who deny climate science are stupid?

[mopinko]

12. and this is why we need to save the old varieties.

[Bayard]

13. I refer to tomatoes from the grocery as, "plastic tomatoes".

That's about how they taste. The little grape tomatoes for salad are a bit better.

My plants are starting to get blooms on them.....can't wait!

[NRaleighLiberal]

15. Store bought tomatoes. Hybrids bred for machine harvest, picked

Just slightly ripe, gassed with ethylene, main traits ability to be abused and hold up. Bleech.

Even the pricey colorful heirlooms sold in Whole Foods or some grocery stores are picked well underripe and have poor texture and underdeveloped flavors

Heirloom types (there are literally thousands of varieties) are for home or farm growing and very short storage and careful handling.

We don't eat a fresh tomato we don't grow...between September and June we eat canned, frozen, dehydrated or sauced tomatoes.

This year, around 100 varieties in containers or strawbales in our driveway. Can't wait!

[Codeine]

23. Strawbales?

That sounds interesting.

[NRaleighLiberal]

25. If you google

Gardeners Supply Straw Bale gardening you can find an article I wrote for their blog. You can also find my book "Growing Vegetables in Strawbales" here and there

[Codeine]

26. Awesome! I'll look it up!

Edit: Kindle edition purchased.

[Faux pas]

16. Lol

I thought I was the only one who thought the maters tasted like a wet red paper towel!

[shanti]

18. Farmer's markets

have the best tasting tomatoes, imo. Besides my own home-grown, that is.

[Codeine]

22. Meh. If you want fresh, affordable tomatoes

available year-round in large quantities across the globe then you need to accept that those fruits will be bred and grown for durability, ease of harvest, and extended shelf-life. Heirloom tomatoes are great on a seasonal and regional basis and a premium price, but those aren’t the hallmarks of a global food supply chain.

Now maybe this genetic discovery will allow a little tinkering that leads to more flavorful tomatoes that still retain the traits that make our current fruits commercially viable, but then everyone is going to bitch about GMOs. Real life is compromise.

[NRaleighLiberal]

27. Yup... we've become"seasonal eaters"...focusing on using

what is at its peak. So, we eat strawberries only May and June, etc....avoids disappointment and leads to flexibility and creative cooking!

[EX500rider]

29. There u go being all reasonable again...get on the outrage wagon!!! lol nt

[Blue_true]

71. She can be like that sometimes, well often. nt

[Codeine]

74. My avatar aside,

I’m an old bald white guy.

[Blue_true]

75. Ohh, sorry. For some reason I had pegged you as a female poster.

You know, your writing is pretty feminine , which certainly isn't a bad characteristic to have in writing because it makes for more sensible prose. One habit that I have is that I try to get an idea of what a person is like from how they write and how they use words, it's fun but sometimes I can be off on my assessment.

[Codeine]

83. It's all good.

There are certainly worse things than being mistaken for a woman.

[bronxiteforever]

30. K& R.Planted 2 heirloom varieties this week

One from 1890 and the other is a “Cherokee” that predates 1885. These will be in competition with my beefsteaks this year.
Great article thanks for posting.

[NRaleighLiberal]

46. I am the lucky duck that named Cherokee Purple..

Received it in 1990 from JD Green, Sevierville TN, who got it from a family that got it from Cherokee Indians 100 years before...dates are imprecise. Cherokee Chocolate is a skin color mutant of Cherokee Purple that emerged in my garden in 1995. Cherokee Green came from Cherokee Chocolate in 1997.

[bronxiteforever]

50. That is so awesome! Thanks for sharing this.

[Blue_true]

73. I knew from your past posts that you were into tomatoes.

But it looks like you go well beyond what the typical fan of tomatoes do. The stuff you mentioned takes pretty keen observation and detailed logging of fruit and it's seeds.

[Greybnk48]

54. I've grown Cherokee Purple in the past

and they're beautiful and delicious! You're a celebrity among gardeners, NRaleighLiberal! Trying Rutgers heirloom this year.

[NRaleighLiberal]

78. Ah - I've grown it - nice tomato (from 1934)

I've a collection of thousands of types - grown 4000 or so in my 40 years of gardening. Rutgers is an interesting variety - created from Marglobe (crossed with a variety called JTD) - Marglobe, from the 1920s, was from a cross of Marvel and Globe. All historic, important varieties. Nothing like our current colorful, big, often ugly heirlooms!

thanks for the recommendation...

[DetlefK]

32. How many people know that tomatoes are supposed to taste fruity and almost sweet?

How many people know what it's like to eat a decent tomato?

[smirkymonkey]

76. Very few, I suppose.

Many people think they dislike tomatoes because they have never had a good one. We grew up on garden tomatoes (my dad always had a big garden) which were delicious and I will only eat garden, organic or vine ripened tomatoes. I can't stand supermarket cultivated varieties. They have no flavor at all.

They are more expensive, but they are not worth eating unless they are fresh from the garden or organic. That is one fruit/vegetable I will not compromise on.

[NutmegYankee]

82. I know many.

I’ve had some bumper harvests of Pink Brandywines and Stump of the World tomatoes and was giving them away to neighbors and co-workers a few years back. I now have many people follow my garden progress.

[marybourg]

34. Anyone who thinks today's tomatoes are awful

probably doesn’t remember the supermarket tomatoes of the 50’s through the 70’s, when they were packed three to a cellophane-topped paper box, unripe, damaged side down and that’s all there was.

I didn’t buy whole tomatoes for 40 years, until they started selling Romas ( they later ruined those also) and individual hydroponic and vine-ripened tomatoes in the supermarket. Until then I made do with canned.

[SoCalDem]

48. remember hpw great fuji apples when they were exotic?

now they are mostly mealy and bland

[marybourg]

67. Yes!

[Codeine]

59. So true about Romas.

And it was a virtually overnight change; reliably tasty fruit with a good texture became mealy and bland just like that.

I totally get why; people cottoned on to the fact that they were the best easily-purchased variety and demand skyrocketed. Growers met the demand by breeding Romas that had all the characteristics of regular grocery tomatoes, which is all they could do, really.

[marybourg]

68. Yep.

[Greybnk48]

52. We LOVE tomatoes! I grow my own, and we belong to a CSA group.

I'll get a big box of tomatoes from the GSA later in the summer in addition to the one's I grow. I don't grow a lot anymore. Just one Sweet 100 cherry tomato plant and this year I'm growing the Rutgers heirloom tomato, one I have not tried before. Maybe two plants. They take 70 days and we haven't had Spring here yet, much less summer. I hope I actually get some, but it's going to be close. I'm going to try nevertheless!

[watoos]

65. It' Not just tomatoes

I ran into a young man at my local farmers market.
He told me the government bankrupted most small farmers. He was going to start his dad’s small farm back up. I told him I would be one of his customers.
I was buying a sack of potatoes and I told him that they will grow eyes but GMO potatoes won’t.
I told him that organic and local foods taste better.
He said that one reason that GMO foods have no taste is because they will grow in dead soil.

[gulliver]

79. Great news! But until they get the genes back in the standard tomatoes, heirlooms are great.

[Quixote1818]

85. I figured it was just a matter of time before they figured something like this out

This always baffled me. How did they not know what was fucking the tomatoes up? There had to be a reason and now we know.

[Ligyron]

86. I have to grow tomatoes in the Winter.

South Florida here. They say it's the heat but I thought tomatoes orientated in like Mexico where it can get pretty hot sometimes. Now, I can grow cherry, patio types like Sweet 100's in summer which are good in salads but not really a sandwich tomato if you know what I mean. We usually grew indetermanite Better Boy, varieties in wood shavings in 5 gal buckets cause the soil here is full of nematodes. Just can't do beefsteak type sandwich varieties for a great BLT reliably down here darnit. So jealous...

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

88. Tomatoes aren't the problem.

Peaches and watermelons are.

I gave up buying peaches at least twenty years ago, perhaps even longer. Peaches not only have no flavor but they simply aren't very good.

Watermelons. I know I'm old (age 70) but even so. The watermelons of my youth were sweet, full of seeds, and totally delicious. In recent years watermelons aren't just bland, they have a funky flavor and aren't very sweet at all. I suspect the breeding of seedless varieties is the underlying culprit, but in recent years the lack of flavor and accompanying lack of sweetness is in the breeding of the watermelons. Sigh. I'm thinking of trying to grow my own.

Many years ago, as in the late 1960s, when I lived in Tucson, one spring a (to us) bizarre vine started growing in our back yard. We had no idea what it was, and from curiosity just let it grow. At some point we realized that the vine was producing watermelons. Hooray. In time we harvested the watermelons, and they were the sweetest and juiciest watermelons ever. I want to point out that at no point did we water them, but let them grow in our back yard with no assistance whatsoever Oh, and they were filled with seed. Hmm. I wonder if there's a connection.