"Regaining" Tomato Flavors

[digitS']

Better Tomatoes Ahead (click) ... maybe

I think the research is really for the food industry, incorporating what we already have in some heirlooms, back into commercial farming varieties.

The genes of wild tomatoes also play a role in this but they have been used for some time as plant breeders worked to develop disease and pest resistance. Most gardeners and many farmers' market customers know that a lot of flavor is missing from the food industry's tomatoes.

I would like to say that playing games with the looks of some varieties that the garden seed outfits are putting out there doesn't cut it. I mean, there are a lot of gardeners who tolerate some real appearance problems, along with limited production, just so that they can enjoy their favorite tomato flavors. Yes, we all want tomatoes that don't crack, that are easy to slice, etc., but appearance is more important to the non-gardener. That's okay. If you can't sample and don't know the variety anyway, about all you can go by is appearance.

I'm rather amazed that there are a half-dozen apple varieties with stickers for identification on each and every fruit in a supermarket. Not so with tomatoes! Maybe that's okay because it must keep costs low but ... we want what we want!!

Steve

 

[seedcorn]

Problem with products that you ship is that flavor is down the list for qualities selected for. What flavor profile would you use? There are posters on here that swear by certain heirloom varieties and mutter about the lack of flavor of hybrid tomatoes. Whereas I love the flavor of Better Boys and dislike the flavor of most heirloom varieties especially the non-red (black, yellow, white) ones. White ones, might as well eat stems..

 

[digitS']

Ha! I did a Google search. UC Davis is the land-grant ag school with assistance to California growers in the Central Valley. Sure, they have information for home gardeners. Just to keep those folks OUT of my search and only include the commercial cultivars, I did a (minus)home and a (minus)garden. Then did a site search for ucdavis and "Better Boys."

ONE webpage showed up! It was for public parks! The food industry must not be asking the commercial growers for Better Boy, @seedcorn . Even if, it must be in the top 5 or 10 gardeners prefer.

I downloaded a research paper advising produce companies on gassing green tomatoes to find some names of cultivars you might find in a farm field or supermarket. Sygenta's Quali T looks like it has an important role. You have to decide what number (from 21 to 99) to put behind that name because there are a number of varieties.

I checked Dave's Garden to see if gardeners had an opinion to share on one of those. Nope.

Steve

 

[seedcorn]

Better Boy will NOT ship so useless to commercial plus it is an indeterminate. They only want determinate tomatoes.

 

[Pulsegleaner]

I also think there are some combos that just will never really catch on. For example, when you look around heirlooms, you will notice a general dearth of green when ripe plum/paste tomatoes (there is green sausage, but that is the only one I can name off the top of my head) I think this isn't actually an accident and may have something to do with what color each tomato turns when you cook it. Generally cooking tomatoes drives their color closer to the yellow orange zone, as the chlorophyll degrades and the carotenoids lycopenese and xanthophylls oxidize. Pink tomatoes tend to get to a sauce pretty close to the "standard" red orange. Purples and blacks tend to get a deep red (sort of a Maderia wine sauce color). Yellows become orange, white yellow. All of those are comparatively appetizing colors. However when you cook a green tomato, you tend to wind up with a sauce that is a sort of off putting mousy brown/brownish olive color. So basically green paste tomatoes are not really useful in cooking except in those recipes where one is using paste tomatoes raw (salsa, brushchetta etc.) which (especially for a commercial paste tomato) rather limiting.

Though a part of me would be curious to see what happened if one cooked a green tomato type that made no carotenoids at all (i.e. did not have the yellow traces in it's greenness that most do or bit of pink (like aunt ruby's) maybe that cooks up to a pleasant color (pesto color, maybe?)

 

[majorcatfish]

the general population is so domesticated to eating gassed tomatoes/produce, they would not know what to do with them. if it can not handle being stored or shipped it's not going to be on the market shelves . if you do find a market selling them, they are tossing them into the dumpster.....

like @seedcorn mentioned"they only want determinant verities. it's all about the Benjamin's....

we who know that tomatoes/fresh veggies have a complex flavors when we put our heart and soul into growing them and either canning or freezing..

love everyone's competent responses to this thread...

life is good here below the 35th line......mc

 

[seedcorn]

Unless you pick them fresh out of a garden, they don't know what real tomatoes are suppose to taste like. Come on, some eat green tomatoes before they get a chance to ripen..... yuck.

 

[baymule]

We never buy tomatoes from the store. We even tell servers at restaurants to hold the tomatoes on our salads. I grow our tomatoes. They are heirlooms and full of flavor. I can them, make sauce and dehydrate them. In the winter we crumble the dehydrated tomatoes over our salads.

Store bought gassed red balls

 

[seedcorn]

I'll see your heirloom and raise you 2 Better Boys....

Although you have me on San Marzano...

 

[Nyboy]

I like eating plum tomatoes in salads and sandwiches.