Relive the good old tomato days in your garden

Overheard while squeezing avocados in the produce department: “Tomatoes today just don’t taste like they used to.” Just the nostalgic ranting of a senior citizen or an accurate observation?

The availability of tomatoes, as well as most vegetable and fruit crops, has changed significantly over the last 50 years. As our interstate highway network evolved, vegetables and fruits began to appear in stores thousands of miles away from the farm or orchard.

But the new markets brought new challenges. Although we could transport tomatoes for a thousand miles, they often arrived looking sad, bruised and travel weary. The increasing demand for tomatoes also required growers to maximize their yields way beyond the limits of the traditional plants they were using.

Increasing tomato yield and durability became the focal point of much agricultural research. We had the infrastructure to ship the product, but now we needed to have large quantities that would also look good on supermarket shelves. Research focused on developing hybrids that had the desirable features.

Heirloom or hybrid?

It’s helpful to understand the difference between heirloom and hybrid vegetables. Both refer to types of plant reproduction. Heirloom plants come from seeds with staying power. Many of these varieties have been around for 50 years or more and have been passed down through several generations.

These plants also are open-pollinated, which simply means that wind or insects have done the pollination without any help from us. Heirloom seeds reliably produce the same species each year. Many nostalgic memories of mouth-watering tomatoes come from heirloom varieties.

Hybrid plants are those that result from crossing two different varieties of the same species to maximize certain traits. For example a variety with good disease resistance can be crossed with another variety that has excellent color. Pollination is carefully controlled so only these two varieties are involved.

Hybridized plants are not the same as genetically modified organisms. A genetically modified organism can be a plant, animal or microorganism. The genetic material of the organism is modified through the use of complex genetic-engineering techniques that go way beyond pollination.

Hybridization is a lengthy and expensive process. It can take several years to produce a new cultivar, which developers often patent to protect their investment. Most supermarket tomatoes are hybrid varieties.

The flavor factor

But all this manipulation can be hard on the flavor factor. To produce high-yield plants with uniform tomatoes capable of surviving travel and refrigeration requires extensive hybridization. Many feel flavor has taken a back seat to shelf life and uniformity.

Words like bland, pale and “tasteless cardboard” have been used to describe some of these tomato creations. Of course if you live in the north and want tomatoes in January, something has to give. There is a ray of hope, though; varieties are being developed that do have good taste and still ship and show well.

Meet Henry Klee, a professor of horticultural sciences at the University of Florida. In a recent New York Times article by Kenneth Chang, Klee creatively describes the problem: “Think of the tomato flavor as a symphony with lots of notes. Over the last 50 years, they’ve removed one instrument at a time.”

What’s left of the flavor symphony? Only those beautiful, red, bland and mealy orbs that line the produce shelves in winter.

Klee’s work has focused on cracking the flavor code for tomatoes. Flavor is complex, involving both nose and taste buds. Acids, sugars and volatile (air borne) compounds all blend to create taste. The volatiles are especially challenging because a tomato has 26 genes producing compounds that waft into the air. In contrast bananas have one major volatile compound that creates the unique smell.

Klee’s lab is using traditional plant breeding to produce a new strain of tomato that will travel well and still remind you of grandma’s garden. Growers are very interested but quickly mention they are paid by the pound, not by flavor.

You can wait for Klee’s new creation, or you can relive the good old tomato days this summer in your own garden. Just Google “tasty heirloom tomatoes” and find lots of suggestions for excellent-tasting varieties. Find them in nurseries or just order some seeds and start your own plants. Many stores now have heirloom seed sections in their spring seed displays.

Let me know how your gardens grow.

Email Herb Broda at 4nature.notebook@gmail.com.