Comments on: GM Tomatoes Don’t Taste Bad

By: Matt

Matt — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:50:21 +0000

haha, yeah. I love the “baby” carrots especially. I’m sure most people assume they’re the youngest, most tender carrots when really they’re the oldest and gnarliest and have just been ground down.

I’m optimistic about the GM situation. I don’t think the average American is very alarmist about this type of stuff, and is pretty easily convinced that new technology will make their lives better. We’ll see though…

By: James

James — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 23:18:50 +0000

What I worry about is that we’re caught in a chicken/egg situation where there’s no investment in GM traits beneficial to consumers (increased beneficial secondary metabolites, reduced spoilage, better taste, or eliminating allergens, etc) because it’s assumed health conscious consumers will reject anything genetically engineered, and health conscious consumers are, among other reasons, opposed to genetic engineering because they don’t see any benefits to them.

And thanks for the tomato info! It’s strange the things that drive purchasing of fruit and vegetables. From, like you mentioned, slicing off part of the tomato plant and selling it along with the fruit, to breeding much smaller watermelons that people figure they’re more likely to eat in a single sitting, to the idea of selling “baby” carrots.

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 23:03:58 +0000

oh, and (can you tell I study tomatoes?), one of the previous traits that plant breeders emphasized was stem abscission so that the packed tomatoes wouldn’t all stab each other. Now that consumers have begun to perceive supermarket tomatoes as ‘artificial,’ they’ve developed small tomatoes that stick to their stems, producing those little branches of tomatoes ‘on the vine’ that are now in grocery stores.

I think the public (at least in the tech-oriented US) will get on board with GMOs when they start to benefit from the traits – e.g. strawberries full of omega-3s that are resistant to botrytis gray mold.

By: Matt

Matt — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 22:59:19 +0000

As you mentioned, a lot of the loss of flavor in modern tomatoes is due to higher priorities being placed on determinate, machine-harvestable, synchronous fruit that can be stacked 20 feet deep without breaking and shipped/stored for weeks – resulting in a pretty, perfectly round, red fruit that will stay fresh on the consumer’s countertop. Fresh market tomatoes, in nor cal, are all picked green and gassed with ethylene to force ripening (imperfectly). In the midatlantic, virtually all tomatoes have a natural gene mutation that prevents them from ever ripening completely in the first place. Either way, you end up with an inexpensive, pretty, red tomato that’s often hard and white on the inside. Heirloom varieties taste great, but are very susceptible to pests, have to be hand picked and turn to goo shortly after ripening.

I wrote about the ripening inhibitor mutation a little here
http://thescientistgardener.blogspot.com/2009/07/why-supermarket-tomatoes-have-no-taste.html