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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

#41

Post by kentosi »

bluGill wrote: post #30
quickben wrote: post #5

There is something wrong with the food industry. When I was growing up, they taught us that we eat veggies because when they are fully mature, all the nutrients are there and good for us. Somehow, they found out how to make them look ready but still not ripe. And now they found out how to screw the taste to taste better. So they will look and taste good, but the nutritive value will be questionable. Waste of research…

You seem to be mistaking organic for ripe nutritious food. Organic just limits some specific chemicals. That is it. You can replaces those limited chemicals with other "natural" chemicals which may be (and often are) much more harmful. Organic does not save the earth. Sometimes is does, but other times it is more harmful than the conventional practice. Organic is not more nutritious. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it is…

Can you back the claim up that natural chemicals are being used and are harmful?

I thought the whole point of organic is that there are no pesticides being used in the first place.

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

#42

Post by nsxwolf »

ashark wrote: post #21
debacle wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can make popcorn in a saucepan, it's easy and fun. Gourmet popcorn (different kernels) also tastes far better even than the bulk kernels you can find in the store.

I do this, and yeah, the results are pretty great, even with ordinary and easy-to-find Orville Redenbacher corn (off and store brands, not so much). Have you found any varieties that taste like the parent poster describes? I.E. with heavy corn flavor? I've tried a few "heirloom" varieties and they've usually been nuttier-tasting, with smaller pops and a much worse popped-to-unpopped ratio than the Redenbacher corn (t…

Yeah, I tried some Trader Joe's organic stuff, and the result was smaller kernels that were not very crisp.

Redenbachers seems to do the job texture wise, but I'd love to hear about some really great lesser known stuff.

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

#43

Post by JohnJamesRambo »

djsumdog wrote: post #3

From their website: > The University of Florida has released our first two hybrids. We are in discussions with seed companies about licensing. I hope they allow people to save seeds. They should patent all their source seeds immediately and mark them as open/allowing people to use any without worry of patents. Farmers will need to be careful as always. Any seeds that happen to get cross pollinated with seeds from the…

Since they are hybrid seeds, keeping the next F2 generation is not that useful. You get all the things that were used to make the hybrid cross popping out but they are not the same as the F1 parent plants.

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

#44

Post by dkonofalski »

msandford wrote: post #35
dkonofalski wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why I despise the "urban legend" about Monsanto suing the poor, tiny farmer because their Round-Up resistant seeds blew into his crop. The actual story (much like the McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit) makes a lot more sense when you learn that the farmer not only knew that their seeds were Monsanto's but then used Round-Up on all his other crops so that they would die and only the resistant crops were le…

There was unintentional wind blown spreading to begin with, how else would he have gotten roundup ready genes into his soybeans that didn't have it? I agree that he had plenty of intent. But he doesn't seem like the kind of guy to buy the seed from Monsanto first for his "devious" scheme. Personally I kind of agree with him. If you broadcast a TV show over the air you don't get to cry foul if people watch it. Don't w…

Not that it undermines your point, but it wasn't soybeans, it was corn. And, as far as the wind blown spreading, corn doesn't pollinate that far from the source. His farm ran next to the Monsanto test farm and, while there was some wind blowing involved, the majority of the seed was gathered by taking seed from the crop next to his farm and by forcefully killing his crops so that he could harvest the resistant corn only. Like I said, it's not as black and white as everyone likes to think it was and there was even accusations that he trespassed on Monsanto property to get the first stock of seeds and they didn't actually blow onto his property at all.

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

#45

Post by gwern »

cylinder wrote: post #39

Couldn't they just go overseas? I think it's only in America where produce tastes like cardboard.

The overseas tomatoes don't ship or grow any better, and consumers are demonstrably unwilling to pay for them. The point of this research is that by doing the expensive rare difficult phenotyping & genotyping of flavor of all the varieties they used (domestic commercial, heirloom, even wild), you can get a polygenic score which predicts flavor without having to grow & feed to a taste panel; and with this polygenic score, you can then do molecular breeding piggybacking on top of normal breeding, to neutralize the damage. For the most part, there's no inherent biological reason that a robust fast-growing tomato has to taste bad because the taste chemicals represent such a physically minute part of the tomatoes; it's just that with zero selection for taste, the taste gradually suffers over generations.

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

#46

Post by exhilaration »

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…

No need to go that far. I grow amazing tasting heirloom tomatoes in my backyard in Pennsylvania, the Bonnie Best variety from 1908. I grew them for the first time last year and got 115lbs from 5 plants - I was giving bags away to my neighbors and co-workers, got rave reviews!

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

#47

Post by dkonofalski »

throwawaydbfif wrote: post #24
dkonofalski wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is exactly why I despise the "urban legend" about Monsanto suing the poor, tiny farmer because their Round-Up resistant seeds blew into his crop. The actual story (much like the McDonald's hot coffee lawsuit) makes a lot more sense when you learn that the farmer not only knew that their seeds were Monsanto's but then used Round-Up on all his other crops so that they would die and only the resistant crops were le…

I still see a problem with this. If GM crops are capable of being wind blown how does his activity differ at all from someone trying to naturally select for crops with herbicide resistance? Any farmer trying to select for a plant with resistance could accidentally end up reproducing a "patented" plant. I think there's a fundamental problem with patenting things that are self replicating. Given enough time a superior…

Well, there were accusations during the trial that the seeds weren't even wind-blown and that the farmer trespassed on the property once he saw that the Round-Up wasn't killing the crops. Monsanto argued that they spaced a buffer around their farm to prevent wind-blowing and that they routinely mixed up the perimeter soil to prevent any growth from occurring. Even if we were to be liberal with the probabilities and assume that the seeds could have blown onto his land, the concentration of Round-Up resistant plants on the farmer's land was so unnaturally high that it was easy to prove it was intentional and willful infringement.

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

#48

Post by SteveNuts »

kentosi wrote: post #41
bluGill wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be mistaking organic for ripe nutritious food. Organic just limits some specific chemicals. That is it. You can replaces those limited chemicals with other "natural" chemicals which may be (and often are) much more harmful. Organic does not save the earth. Sometimes is does, but other times it is more harmful than the conventional practice. Organic is not more nutritious. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it is…

Can you back the claim up that natural chemicals are being used and are harmful? I thought the whole point of organic is that there are no pesticides being used in the first place.

Organic foods can still use "chemicals", you just can't use synthetically created additives (ferts, pesticides, etc.)

AFAIK they could spray the crops with arsenic and it could still be "organic".

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

#49

Post by dkonofalski »

akiselev wrote: post #29
dkonofalski wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, that doesn't seem like a very objective way to test this kind of thing. We know, based on all kinds of testing done in the past, that our tastebuds react more sensitively to tastes that we don't know to protect us from potentially eating foods that are poisonous or rotten. It's the reason why you have to develop a taste for things like bleu cheese and cilantro and why they taste bitter or strong at first. We're…

Do you have any citations? This all sounds so obvious and logical but so do most other theories in evolutionary psychology and biology. I don't think we have enough evidence to make such strong claims. I developed a taste for spicy food after years of avoiding it like the plague for digestive reasons but only found out after I had a strong craving for Indian food and accidentally got something really spicy. I also ca…

Wikipedia actually has a fairly good overview of the idea: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conditioned_taste_aversion

You can find more info on Google Scholar for specific studies and papers.

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

#50

Post by Ericson2314 »

This is good stuff, but I wish so much effort wasn't spent into making a single breed. If you have the greenhouse space (granted I see this is exponential), and some variation is a coin flip whether its better or not, please peruse both!

I would love 5 varieties of hardy tomato each testing better in its own way!

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