Taste is another matter.
Over the past 70 years, selective breeding for tomatoes that redden evenly, resist pests and transport faithfully has simultaneously yielded fruit that tastes like nothing.
It leads to hope that the beautiful tomato might get some of its taste back.
Because the link between color and flavor was not known until recent decades, tomato growers unintentionally bred hybrid tomatoes with successively decreasing sugar content over the years. Buyers gobbled them up anyway -- patchy tomatoes signaled imperfection to some.
Although experts recently linked the traits, this new research explains the mechanism at a level of detail important for plant geneticists.
By crossing tomato varieties with names like "Moneymaker" (which sell well despite a reputation for mediocre taste), a research team led by scientists at the University of California-Davis honed in on a protein important for both color and flavor.
This protein is key in the development of the tomato fruit's chloroplasts, the cellular factories that produce sugar when exposed to sunlight and help give plants their green color. Tomatoes with more chloroplasts near the stem have a patchy appearance but produce more flavorful sugars.heirloom tomatoes, varieties not hybridized in the same way as mass market tomatoes, are treasured for their superior flavor as well as their unusual appearance. However, these specimens typically command premium prices: upwards of $4 per fruit is not uncommon, shoppers at farmer's markets know. Shoppers on tighter budgets may have had to skip heirloom tastes.
Not anymore. And if similar genetic mechanisms can be identified in other fruits, cultivators may make mass marketing tasty again.
-- Ian Campbell