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For many people summer equals tomatoes. That’s when folks can get their hands on gorgeous heirloom and traditional varieties, full of tomatoey flavor. Such tomatoes provide a stark contrast to year-round supermarket ones, famous for tasting like, well, nothing. They’ve been bred for uniform color and ripening—not for taste.
Now scientists have determined just what’s genetically missing in store-bought tomatoes.
The researchers honed in on two transcription factors. Transcription factors are proteins that control the expression of genes—in this case they’re necessary for the production of chloroplasts, which allow sunlight to generate sugars and other compounds.
Darker green tomato fruit expresses genes that make possible increased photosynthesis—and so the fruits are able to produce more sugars for a tastier end product. But typical supermarket tomatoes, which had been bred to all turn light green at the same time, were also accidentally bred with reduced chloroplasts—and thus reduced sugar content. The research was published in the journal Science. [Ann L.T. Powell et al., "Uniform ripening Encodes a Golden 2-like Transcription Factor Regulating Tomato Fruit Chloroplast Development"]
The scientists say understanding the genes involved in better flavor could enable growers to offer tastier supermarket varieties. So that when you say tomato, I can say to-ma-to or to-mah-to instead of bleech.
—Cynthia Graber
[The above text is a transcript of this podcast.]
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9 Comments
Add CommentWhy bother. Americans are in love with crap.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Why bother"? Are you kidding me? It is our profound birthright to improve the quality of "crap" we choose to love. (Crap being in the eye of the beholder).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThank you Scientific American, I look forward to supermarket tomatoes with a restored level of chloroplasts.
Like most, I too have for long discerned this problem and others in GM produce. But to solve this, I had to resort to the pages of history beginning far before the Indus Civilization but still in the Fertile Crescent forth to a somewhat contemporary era. It is here in this nearly lost time, where upon I gained the answer and that was to grow my own stuff in a garden. Trust me, the real thing always tastes better.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMany supermarket strawberries also look big and red, yet they are lacking in taste. I suspect a they have similarly been bred for looks rather than taste.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDon't say, they were not breeding it with the customer in mind? I'm shocked.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI grow my own in my little Glasshouse,and with added Potash to the fertiser they taste bloody marvellous.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisBeen doing it for 25 years,and that hard rubbery reddish vegetable is a distant memory.
Yes -spelt that with a s because I don't live in USA.
It seems customers should make a choice between flavor and appearance. Some of us take it for granted that attractive looking means tasty.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt should be "homed in on", not "honed in on".
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"So that when you say tomato, I can say to-ma-to or to-mah-to instead of bleech."
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thishave no idea what that means...