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Scientists have quantified flavor-associated chemicals in 398 varieties of tomatoes in order to create a "roadmap" for improving flavor:
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.
[...] One key issue is size. Growers keep increasing individual tomato size and grow more per plant. The trouble is that there is a limit to how much sugar each tomato plant can produce. Bigger tomatoes and more of them means less sugar per tomato and less taste, Klee said. So Klee and colleagues looked at the genomes of the mass-produced tomato varieties and heirloom tomatoes to try to help the grocery tomatoes catch up to their backyard garden taste.
[...] Klee isolated some sugar genes and ones more geared to pure taste, but figured those won't work as well because they clash against shipping and size needs. So he found areas that affect the aroma of tomatoes but not size or heartiness. Reintroducing those into mass-produced tomatoes should work because smell is a big factor in taste, he said. Altering genes in a lab would make the process faster, but because of consumer distrust and regulations, Klee is opting for natural breeding methods – with help from an electric toothbrush to spread pollen.
It sounds like the quest for a tasty tomato will be delayed for years because GMOs are scaaaary.
Also at NYT.
A chemical genetic roadmap to improved tomato flavor (DOI: 10.1126/science.aal1556) (DX)
Previously: Breeding Wildness Back Into Our Fruits and Vegetables
Two Approaches to Enhancing Tomato Flavor
Tomatoes Grown in Australian Desert from Sunshine and Seawater
(Score: 2) by driverless on Monday January 30 2017, @06:54AM
That was one thing that disturbed me about lots of the fruit and veg for sale in US supermarkets, the stuff had virtually no taste. I've always liked nectarines and peaches, but when I bought a bag full of them at Vons, if you'd blindfolded me and fed me one I couldn't have told you what it was I was eating. The friend that I was staying with mentioned this to me, that people sometimes asked him what was so special about nectarines, because all they'd ever had were the tasteless supermarket ones. They actually had no taste, or at least not enough to be able to tell what it was apart from some kind of stonefruit. Apples were even worse, just bland pulpy masses. Cherries were vaguely cherry-like, but nothing like the flavour I'm used to. How do you do that to fruit? Are they grown in chemical vats or something?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday January 30 2017, @08:58AM
How do you do that to fruit?
Just add water. Seriously. The simplest and cheapest way to make higher yield by mass vegetables and fruit is to increase the water content of the food.
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Monday January 30 2017, @04:22PM
Luckily there is some relief from that particular tedium if you live in the right apple-growing localities. NY and NJ have a lot of organic apple orchards with lots of tasty varieties. Not every store carries them, but the ubiquitous green markets do, as do some of the chains like Fairways or Whole Foods. I don't know for sure, but I suspect it's a similar situation in the Yakima in Washington state.
Logistically there's no reason that better fruit couldn't be more widely distributed in America, so maybe it's possible for people who've been limited to Red Delicious and Granny Smith apples to get them if they demand them. Jonah Gold and Honey Crisp are worth asking for.
Washington DC delenda est.