Podcast: Play in new window
BOB HIRSHON (host):
Reclaiming tomato flavor. I’m Bob Hirshon and this is Science Update.
If you bite into a sweet, juicy heirloom tomato fresh from the garden, you can’t help but wonder where supermarket tomatoes – with their mushy, tasteless flesh – went wrong. University of Florida researcher Harry Klee says the gradual loss of flavor was a side-effect of breeding for improved yield, disease resistance, and shelf life.
HARRY KLEE (University of Florida):
The problem is the consumer has been totally left out of the equation.
HIRSHON:
Klee and his team want to change that. They had people rate 160 varieties of tomatoes, and then identified the most important flavor compounds.
KLEE:
What we find is roughly half of the chemicals contributing to that flavor are really significantly down in the modern tomato. They’ve been lost.
HIRSHON:
In Science magazine, Klee’s team outlines a genetic blueprint for restoring flavor to commercially viable tomato varieties. I’m Bob Hirshon, for AAAS, the science society.
Story by Susanne Bard