Posted on 04/04/2017 4:44:54 PM PDT by vannrox
Ever wonder why most store-bought tomatoes are so tasteless? The answer (surprise, surprise) has to do with revenue: Tomato farmers care about yield, and the genetic variants associated with yield are not associated with tasty tomato flavors, a new study finds.
"Consumers complain that the modern tomato has little flavor. [It's] like a 'water bomb,'" said the study's co-principal investigator Sanwen Huang, the deputy director general at the Agricultural Genome Institute at Shenzhen at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.
How can farmers ditch this "water bomb" and reinstate the rich, sweet flavor of the tomato? To find out, Huang and colleagues investigated which genes are associated with tomatoes' taste.
(Excerpt) Read more at livescience.com ...
You know paying pickers decent wages would only raise the retail price of a tomato a tiny little bit and the quality would be much higher and so worth it. Corporate America can f up anything. Even tomatoes.
Does canning heat destroy the taste of real tomatos??
Every summer there are 200 acres of roma tomatoes grown adjacent to the property here. They all taste like crap.
Nothing beats a Cherokee Purple.
Momotaro. Truly one of the most delicious tomatoes you'll ever eat.
Great story. Thanks.
Thanks for the tip...I will try that :)
I can’t believe this thread......my Russian neighbor brings us Russian tomatoes whenever he visits Russia. They are an incredible red and absolutely delicious. I am sure I will be unmasked.
You’ve never tasted a really great tomato or carrots until you’ve added rock dust. A couple of years ago we also added 20 pounds of greensand from New Jersey under the tomatos, and will add more this year. It’s expensive, at Agway, but worth it. Someday we’ll see if we can find it by the trailer load in New Jersey. We just throw it on and spade it in. The rock dust also makes the soil easier to dig and retains water. For the first time we eren’t bothered by slugs eating the tomatos. The rock dust has sharp edges and they don’t like crawling over it.
Heard about it on the Coast to Coast AM radio show, then read about it on the internet, and in a book about Findhorn garden in Scotland.
About 50 years ago, I grew a batch of tomatos that was amazingly sweet and delicious. I figured it was the variety, so for many years tried different varities with no luck. Then I heard about rock dust on the radio show and realized what must have happened. The good year, had planted them inan area where granite had been quarried and the soil was loaded with the dust from drilling.
About 5 years ago I added a yard of rock dust spread all over the garden. Tried several varieties of tomatos. All were super sweet and delicious. It greatly improved the taste of carrots and beets, and to a lesser degree, other vegetable
I’m not unsympathetic to the pickers’ working conditions. They were paid very little (they were excluded from minimum-wage laws), they had no toilet facilities in the fields, and they were occasionally sprayed by crop dusters. But the farmers (most of whom were not part of corporate America) could not really give them what they were asking for.
The UFW had this dream that the pickers, if unionized, would get what other union workers had gotten—a middle-class lifestyle. I don’t blame them for the dream. But it just wasn’t realistic. Unionized farm-workers weren’t going to be able to afford to send their kids off to college. Their demands resulted in the use of machines which took their place.
Could Americans afford to buy hamburgers made by workers who make a “living wage” of $15/hour? Of course. We wouldn’t like it, but we could afford it. But at $15/ hour machines could take a lot of those workers’ places—and they will. At the end of the day there will be another set of low-skilled jobs taken away from people who have low skills. Are they better off working for $7.50/ hour or being unemployed at $15/hour. That’s pretty much what happened to a lot (but not all) of people who worked in the fields.
There are a lot of people who enter the world of work with few skills. They didn’t do well in school, and maybe aren’t too bright. Seventy years ago, many of them could have made honest livings doing jobs like digging ditches or construction jobs. By increasing the minimum wage to “help” these people, society has pretty much put them out of work. It’s easier and cheaper to rent s trench-digging machine or hire illegals “off the books”.
Actually, while yield is a major factor, the KEY to why grocery stores sell orangey-red softballs is the need for a tough product that can withstand SHIPPING!
The longevity and resistance to the stresses of packaging and transport are far more important to sellers of tomatoes. Flavour and texture are secondary.
If there was a GMO tomato that tasted half as good as any of the heirloom tomatoes I grow, I’d have no qualms about using it, fresh, canned or as a sauce base.
Those are grown (just like square watermelons) in a BOX (form) to make them square.
Nice try at alarmism, though...
I have, in my front yard, 3 apple types (transparent and 2 Spartan varieties), 4 pear varieties, 4 cherry varieties, and a fig.
The backyard has only an Italian prune plum.
I plan on fixing that soon...
He was an attorney from NY and represented a mob family.
In appreciation for his service, they told him they wanted to give him these seeds. They came from Italy in the early 1900s and were only shared with family. It was meant as an honor when they included him.
There are two varieties.
My neighbor has grown them for 40 years. He is now 89.
They are delicious and beautiful.
I call them Mob Tomatoes.
Great story. It's like visiting an old house with history.
(You wouldn't mind sharing those seeds, would you?)
Someone shared some Italian tomato seeds with me. Both produced red tomatoes, one of them more heart-shaped, one more of a paste/plum variety, both heirlooms, both delicious.
Try the “Early Girl” tomatoes. Small, about the size of a small tennis ball, but meaty (not all that sloppy seedy crap) and tasty.
Buy them already growing or use seeds. I’ve had two of them grow to 15 feet lengths (one split into two branches, each about 8 feet long - had over 25 tomatoes on it).
A little delayed action fertilizer is like Viagra to them.
Keep watered and in the sun.
We had late blooming tomatoes into early December.
Tomatoes were discovered in Mexico and taken back to Europe.
Potatoes were discovered in Peru and taken back to Europe.
Both have been “bred” for certain characteristics.
Both are somewhat bland to me, so adding plenty of salt is helpful.
My father would eat tomatoes like an apple, just chomping into one. And adding salt. That is how I learned.
Brown bread
Better Boy maters
Real peanut butter
Sugar
You are on the money. We got some fresh carrots Sunday at the local farmers market from a fairly close organic small farm. Today I twisted off the green tops and chopped them into sticks. No washing them (we need that soil), no peeling, and handed them out to the family. Everyone went nuts. The taste was sooooo good, a zillion x better than bagged supermarket carrots. I will never buy bagged carrots again.
If there is no easy way to get rid of the squirrels, you can feed them nuts at another end of the yard. This has helped us keep the squirrels from taking one bite of each orange and thus ruining the treeful.
I can’t believe this thread......my Russian neighbor brings us Russian tomatoes whenever he visits Russia. They are an incredible red and absolutely delicious. I am sure I will be unmasked.
Do you use Russian dressing on those tomatoes?!?!
I grow tomatoes from seed my neighbor gave me.
He was an attorney from NY and represented a mob family.
In appreciation for his service, they told him they wanted to give him these seeds. They came from Italy in the early 1900s and were only shared with family. It was meant as an honor when they included him.
There are two varieties.
My neighbor has grown them for 40 years. He is now 89.
They are delicious and beautiful.
I call them Mob Tomatoes.
Great story. It’s like visiting an old house with history.
(You wouldn’t mind sharing those seeds, would you?)
Someone shared some Italian tomato seeds with me. Both produced red tomatoes, one of them more heart-shaped, one more of a paste/plum variety, both heirlooms, both delicious.
It is a great story :)
If we can’t have the seeds, hopefully someone can figure out the variety :)
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