The short answer is, somewhat ironically, that you the consumer are more likely to buy gross and boring tomatoes. Conventional tomatoes, the fat, perfectly red things you buy at Giant or wherever, are grown in such a way as to take advantage of a natural mutation that expresses as a trait known as “uniform ripening.” Whereas garden tomatoes or heirloom tomatoes ripen unevenly — some green here, some red there — tomatoes with uniform ripening turn red at once. Commercial growers exploit this trait because a perfectly red tomato is more likely to be purchased by you the consumer, regardless of lack-of-taste.A study in the new issue of Science (out tomorrow) reveals that it’s actually the same gene responsible for that tomato’s good looks as is responsible for aspects of the tomato’s flavor and nutritional content. The good news — or bad, depending on your general view of crop tinkering — is that this is information that can be used to make run-of-the-mill tomatoes taste better and be more healthy. Though that’s still up to the market.The mutation leading to uniform ripening was discovered way back in the 1920s; farmers weren’t exactly sequencing tomato DNA then, and there was nothing particularly given about the mutation having to do with flavor and nutrition. I suppose farmers just noted the lack of taste, noted that consumers were still buying more of them, and moved on. The paper’s lead author James Giovannoni, a plant molecular biologist with BTI and the U.S. Department of Agriculture, notes that “This is an unintended consequence — producers currently don’t get a penny more for [flavor] quality.”Specifically, the gene that controls ripening also controls the levels of sugar, carbohydrates, and carotenoids you get in a tomato. So by selecting for awesome tomato color, farmers have been unwittingly selecting for bad tasting/less healthy tomatoes. Things like this have surely happened countless times since the beginning of agriculture with all different kinds of crops. The upshot of the discovery is that producers will now be able to test for the mutation in seedlings, which means they can make a decision early on as to which kind of tomato they want: pretty tomatoes, or tomatoes that taste like something.Also: it’s a fruit, not a vegetable.Reach this writer at michaelb@motherboard.tv.
Advertisement