Skip to main content

Researchers have sequenced the genome of 400 different tomato varieties

tomatoes taste great again bigstock tomato woman 22028879
Modern science has a new problem in its sights: restoring the flavor of bland supermarket tomatoes.

In a new paper, published in the journal Science, researchers in the United States and China break down the first steps in what they hope could soon bring us more flavorsome shop-bought tomatoes.

Related Videos

“In terms of value, tomato is the largest fruit or vegetable crop in the entire world,” University of Florida Professor Harry Klee, one of the study’s authors, told Digital Trends. “It’s been adopted into virtually every cuisine in the world. But if you ask anyone in the developed world, they’ll tell you that the quality of supermarket tomatoes is not good. Most everyone has at some point tried one of the older, delicious varieties of tomato and know what it is capable of delivering — and store-bought tomatoes just don’t live up to it.”

The study carried out by Professor Klee and others has been ongoing for the past 12 years. It involved carrying out taste tests, as well as chemical and genetic analysis, on hundreds of varieties of tomatoes.

“What we’ve shown is that tomatoes available in stores are significantly deficient in about half of the important flavor volatile chemicals, the aroma compounds which give tomatoes their unique flavor,” he continued. “With our collaborators, we also sequenced the genomes of 400 different varieties and carried out a genetic association study, mapping out on the genome the areas that areas that influence the synthesis of those important flavor chemicals.”

One of the big challenges with tomatoes, Klee said, is that they have particularly complex flavors. The researchers have identified 30 different compounds, all of which contribute in some way to how a tomato tastes.

“There is no single compound which is a ‘tomato flavor,’” he said. “That’s not true for things like banana, blueberry, or strawberry. For all of those I could give you one volatile chemical you could smell and instantly recognize. It’s the complexity of tomato which makes this project difficult. It’s really a large mixture of chemicals which, when combined, registers in your brain as a tomato flavor.”

Still, the researchers are making progress. While they’ve decided not to pursue a GMO approach to creating more flavorsome tomatoes, Klee said that the plan is to use “traditional breeding approaches involving older varieties to rescue the genetics that have been lost.”

The ultimate plan is to get tastier tomatoes into the hands (and, well, the stomachs) of the general public within the next three years.

Can science next work out why Snickers seem to have gotten so much smaller since we were kids?

Editors' Recommendations

Rotten Tomatoes revamps user reviews after Captain Marvel troll campaign
Brie Larson as Captain Marvel

Rotten Tomatoes, the popular film and television review aggregator, announced it will be changing the way that it handles user-generated reviews and rankings in an effort to combat toxicity on the site.

In the near future, Rotten Tomatoes users will not be able to rate or leave comments about movies that haven't come out yet, the site said in a blog post. Rotten Tomatoes has also removed its "Want to See" score for pre-release films, claiming that many users confused the metric with a film's "Audience Score" (i.e. the percentage of Rotten Tomatoes users who gave the movie in question a positive ranking). The Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score only appears once a movie is available to the general public.

Read more
Fears about kids’ screen use may have been overblown, Oxford researchers find
social media addiction teens on phones

Many people take it as gospel that digital technologies are harmful to young people’s mental health. But is this actually the case? A recent study from the University of Oxford, which analyzed data from 350,000 subjects in the U.K and United States, suggests we may be overstating their significance.

While the researchers don’t deny that digital technologies can have a negative impact on young users, they conclude that it contributes just 0.4 percent toward a young person’s negative well-being. According to the study, digital technologies are far, far outstripped by other influences -- including binge-drinking, marijuana use, and even the importance of a good breakfast.

Read more
This startup will sequence your entire genome for free — but there’s a catch
illumina genome

Want to get your DNA sequenced, but don’t want to shell out the hundred bucks or so you’d have to pay companies such as 23andMe and Helix? No problem: A new startup called Nebula Genomics offers you the opportunity to have it done for free.

To qualify for a free genome sequence, you’ll have to provide some information about your health, which is then shared with researchers, in addition to your DNA data. In exchange for this information -- which is kept anonymous -- they then cover the cost of the genome sequencing. The hope is to gather enough genetic data to develop new drugs and other treatments for solving a range of diseases. All data is stored on the blockchain, and users get to decide exactly what information is shared with companies or other research institutes. You can also pay $99 upfront without having to answer additional questions.

Read more