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posted by on Monday January 30 2017, @01:01AM   Printer-friendly
from the let's-call-the-whole-thing-off dept.

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


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  • (Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday January 30 2017, @04:12PM

    by Thexalon (636) on Monday January 30 2017, @04:12PM (#460680)

    it's that the solution is "use the good tomatoes, not the terrible watery ones bred recently."

    Another factor here is that the grocery store tomatoes are usually picked green so that they'll have time to make it to market, and some of the less reputable sources dye them red, so most of them are not ripe by the time you eat them.

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