Genes may help grocery tomatoes catch up to heirloom taste
WASHINGTON — Bite into a supermarket tomato and you’ll probably notice something missing: taste. Scientists think they can put the yum back into the grocery tomato by tinkering with its genetic recipe.
Researchers are reinstalling five long-lost genetic traits that add much of the sweet-yet-acidic taste that had been bred out of mass-produced tomatoes for the past 50 years. They’re using mostly natural breeding methods, not genetic modification technology.
“We know what’s wrong with modern tomatoes and we have a pretty good idea how to fix it,” said University of Florida horticultural scientist Harry Klee , co-author of a study in Thursday’s journal Science .
Yield of tomatoes has tripled since 1960, but there’s been a slow decline in taste quality as tomatoes have been bred for size and sturdiness at the expense of flavour. Klee said a tastier supermarket tomato could be ready within three years.