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A Genetic Fix to Put the Taste Back in Tomatoes

nytimes.com

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Re: A Genetic Fix to Put the Taste Back in Tomatoes

#121

Post by kbart »

balfirevic wrote: post #77
david-given wrote: post #52

If you refrigerate tomatoes, they go bland --- the cold temperatures kills some of the flavour. https://mobile.nytimes.com/2016/10/18/science/tomato-flavor-...

Did they actually test for taste in that research? This guy has and he disagrees: http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/07/how-to-store-tomatoes.htm... http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/09/tomato-taste-test-refrige... http://www.seriouseats.com/2014/09/why-you-should-refrigerat...

In supermarkets tomatoes are usually sold not ripened fully (for a longer shelve life). Keeping them in a warm, bright place will ripe them more and taste improves slightly.

Re: A Genetic Fix to Put the Taste Back in Tomatoes

#122

Post by Obi_Juan_Kenobi »

ada1981 wrote: post #79

This is perhaps the most hilarious thing I've seen. There are plenty of varieties of delicious tomatoes you can grow or buy.. the idea we need to "reengineer a genetic fix" seems like something the Onion should be running. At our cooperative store we have amazing flavorful tomatoes.

You don't understand the purpose.

The idea is to re-introduce these traits in lines that are amenable to modern agriculture. Namely, drought/pest/salinity tolerance, firmness and ability to ship, yield, use in marginal soils, etc. etc.

I'm all for agricultural alternatives, but modern agriculture obviously plays a huge role in our food production, and will continue to do so for some time.

Re: A Genetic Fix to Put the Taste Back in Tomatoes

#123

Post by Obi_Juan_Kenobi »

samirillian wrote: post #78

Tomatoes are practically weeds. They grow like crazy, and you can eat heirlooms as sweet or as savory as you like. Sometimes I think I didn't know wealth until I had a cherokee purple straight off the vine. You can practically make sashimi with it. Now I'm just gonna come out and say it: fucking with genes worries me. It only takes one unforeseen toxic externality for the whole thing to turn out very poorly. (dangers…

Plant patents are just as onerous as utility patents. Creating exclusive new breeds is the entire intended purpose of this type of patent, one of only six (or seven?) in the US.

https://www.uspto.gov/patents-getting-started/patent-basics/...

Toxic externalities, as you say, occur readily in traditional breeding when creating hybrids. I find it very difficult to believe you have any experience or background in breeding or agriculture if you're not aware of this. Targeted modifications are much easier to understand and predict; it's a matter of changing a single locus vs. thousands.

Certain modifications could be foolish, but for reasons we understand. Extant transgenics focus on e.g. the Shikimic acid pathway (roundup ready) precisely because it is absent outside of plants, and therefore unlikely to cause complications prima facie.

Re: A Genetic Fix to Put the Taste Back in Tomatoes

#124

Post by riffraff »

hexane360 wrote: post #100
Retric wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, younger people don't know what they are missing. As the article points out it's not a sudden drop it's a low change over time where A is almost as good as B and B is almost as good as C ... until it's cardboard. I have done this experiment with Apples and Oranges kids really prefer the full flavor options and they are not just preferring their childhood tastes as they are still kids.

Time to break open a seed vault and see who's right. We give young'uns the old stuff and see how they react. And then make a fortune if you're right, and make nothing if your parent comment is right.

I have friends who grow heirloom varieties of vegetables, they often complain that it's hard to compete with supermarket stuff because of productivity (price), seasonality, appearance (I.e. some tomato never gets properly red and people think it's less tasty) etc.

Their stuff tastes great, but you won't be making a fortune with it unless you cater to people who care about this stuff and are willing to pay more.

Afaict this is what "whole foods" does in the US and they are pretty successful.

Re: A Genetic Fix to Put the Taste Back in Tomatoes

#125

Post by jbpetersen »

psadri wrote: post #67
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #10

There's a similar problem with popcorn. Showing my age card here, but back in the 1970's popcorn actually tasted like corn , which seems to be a difficult concept to explain to anyone under 40. It all went south around the same time that microwave popcorn became popular. People always ask if I don't like tomatoes when I eat around them in salads or remove from burgers. Nope, I love tomatoes, that's why I don't eat fl…

I wish there was a brand dedicated to optimizing for taste of fruits and vegetables vs appearance. And by taste I don't mean sweetness. I'd actually optimize for less sweet fruits.

Give the MJ industry a few years to spearhead experimentation with highly controlled farming techniques, then watch the tech scope out to custom strains of all sorts of different consumable plants as it comes down in price and people with related expertise gradually spread out as well.

Re: A Genetic Fix to Put the Taste Back in Tomatoes

#127

Post by jamesrcole »

register wrote: post #126

I eat tomatoes grown by my father who is retired and does this as an hobby. His tomatoes are extremely tasty and satisfying. I really don't miss the need for any genetic fix. Supermarkets tomatoes are commercialized unripe and then ripen by artificial means.

Do you think the flavour problems with supermarket tomatoes would be fixed by letting them ripen naturally?

Re: A Genetic Fix to Put the Taste Back in Tomatoes

#128

Post by shmerl »

Obi_Juan_Kenobi wrote: post #120
shmerl wrote: post #51

> I don’t want people to not eat a great-tasting tomato because they’re scared of it And we also don't want anyone to claim exclusive rights on producing such tomatoes, because some moron came up with the idea to patent genes.

Uh, plant patents are one of only a handful of patent varieties (in the US), and they exist specifically to cover new breeds. This is very much a patent-able breed, and much more easily enforced because it's a well characterized bit of law, whereas the 'gene patents' only got by on a technicality of requiring cDNA intermediates.

Patents on living beings in general are as ridiculous as patents on genes.

Re: A Genetic Fix to Put the Taste Back in Tomatoes

#129

Post by koliber »

oppositelock wrote: post #40
tetraodonpuffer wrote: post #14

amazing tasting tomatoes still exist around the world, if you are on vacation in Italy in the summer buy some "cuor di bue" tomatoes at the supermarket and they will be amazing. Of course if you happen to know somebody that grows them and you can pick them off the plant they will be even more incredible, but even the "normal" supermarket ones are going to be orders of magnitude tastier than anything you can find in N…

Amazing tasting tomatoes are also very easy to grow yourself. Tomatoes are a hardy vine, and hard to mess up, you just need plenty of sunshine. There are seeds available for many heirloom varieties, and when you grow them yourself, you pick them at the peak of freshness. I particularly like the Early Girl variety. It's a bummer that you can't re-plant the seeds from most tomatoes, which are F1 hybrids, so the next ge…

You mention that there are plenty of heirloom tomatoes that area easy to grow. Two sentences later you say that you can't replant the seeds because they are F1 hybrids.

I think a clarification is in order. The general consensus is that if a tomato is an heirloom it is not a hybrid, and vice versa.

I have had excellent luck with growing plants from collected seeds for any of the heirloom tomatoes I've grown. With hybrids, your mileage may vary.

That being said, I find heirloom tomatoes to be a lot more finicky to grow. Various species are sensitive to diseases. Excessive rain increases chances of diseases, and therefore, a green house or at least rain cover helps out.

That being said, I encourage anyone to try growing their own tomatoes. You will get fruit! It's hugely satisfying. Once you eat a good tomato, it feels like you are in on a secret most people don't know about.

Re: A Genetic Fix to Put the Taste Back in Tomatoes

#130

Post by jcoffland »

ooqr wrote: post #81
Eric_WVGG wrote: post #10

There's a similar problem with popcorn. Showing my age card here, but back in the 1970's popcorn actually tasted like corn , which seems to be a difficult concept to explain to anyone under 40. It all went south around the same time that microwave popcorn became popular. People always ask if I don't like tomatoes when I eat around them in salads or remove from burgers. Nope, I love tomatoes, that's why I don't eat fl…

I thought I disliked tomatoes as a kid, eating around them as you describe. Only when I discovered garden-grown cherry tomatoes did I flip the other way. So far the other way I'm surprised I didn't get sick eating so many of them. They're incredible.

Have you tried sungolds? They are a little smaller than cherry tomatoes, yellow-orange and even better, IMO. They are sweet but still retain a ton of tomato flavor. They also grow like crazy. If you give them something to climb on, plenty of sun and water the plants get huge. Here in CA I had them fruiting this year from May all the way into December. Finally the frost got them.
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