Big, Red and Tasteless: Why Tomatoes Lost Their Flavor
By Laura Geggel, Senior Writer | January 26, 2017 02:07pm ET
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Big, Red and Tasteless: Why Tomatoes Lost Their Flavor
Why are store-bought tomatoes in the U.S. so tasteless? They've been bred to be firm and large, two qualities that are associated with the genetic loss of that tasty tomato flavor.
Credit: Harry Klee/University of Florida
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. [Why Are Bananas Berries, But Strawberries Aren't?]
http://www.livescience.com/57647-why-store-tomatoes-are-tasteless.html
