Making Tomatoes Tasty Again

If you pay a visit to the vegetables area in the supermarket you will certainly find tomatoes in their different sizes and varieties, all of them with a bright attractive red that screams: "Eat me, I'm delicious!". But in case you don't know (or remember) it, tomatoes used to be a lot more tasty than the ones we find in stores today. Why? Image consumption and the global economy. But now, scientists have found a way to bring back the lost flavor of tomatoes.

Enjoying fresh tomatoes all year, no matter where you live, is common in almost every big city. But this "luxury" has a cost. Producers have selected the fruit in order to make it resistant to plagues and shipping, to increase yields and size and to make it more attractive. This way the products from countries near the equator can travel everywhere and arrive safe and good looking. The problem is that unintentionally the genes that made it tasty were "lost" and we ended up with the mild watery tomatoes of the supermarket.

But now, a team of researchers made a exhaustive study to find the "genetic path" to make tomatoes tasty again. The final work can be used by producers as a guide to select the right varieties that can be breed to recover the good old flavor. The bad news is that all the other traits that made them resistant and affordable for exportation will be lost. This means that these "new" tomatoes will be only used for local consumption. So, if you want to try tasty tomatoes again, you will have to consume local or travel to the farm.

Source: Science