Bland tomato? It probably doesn't have tasty genes

[C C]

https://cosmosmagazine.com/biology/bland...s-bred-out

EXCERPT: It’s no secret that heirloom tomatoes taste superior to their supermarket equivalents. Now research shows certain genes responsible for that intense flavour have been bred out. Denise Tieman at the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences in Shenzhen and colleagues conducted detailed analyses on tomatoes to identify the cause of the taste discrepancy. Their work [...] emphasises the need to focus on re-flavouring one of the world’s highest-value fruits – a product which, according to the paper, is “a major cause of consumer complaint”....

[elte]

I've noticed the tomatoes I get lately have tastier genes than in the past.

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Never expected the flavor to have been bred out of them. I used to assume the tastelessness was the result of their being picked green and gassed later to turn them red. There was this proposed remedy a year and a half ago: Supermarket tomatoes are tastier when dunked in hot water, finds study

I wonder how much the feudal lords of Florida's tomato industry and their serfdom would be affected by Trump's wall. Naive volunteers currently stepping into the spider's web of human chattel versus a remote potential of having to actively abduct and smuggle Latin Americans in the future by boat / ship traffic.

ESTABROOK: Well, as he pointed out, one of his crew finally just couldn't take it anymore and ran away, and one of the crew boss guys chased him in the pickup truck and came back an hour or so later, and the guy was beaten to the point where he was unrecognizable and had to be dropped off at the hospital, and it was - he was permanently injured. He survived but permanently injured. And the crew boss said: You want to try to run away from me? Take a look.

FLATOW: Is this still going on?

ESTABROOK: Sadly, it's still going on. This is not an isolated case. There have been more than 1,200 people freed from slavery rings in Florida agriculture in the last 10 or 15 years. Off the record an official told me recently that there's two cases currently under investigation. The problem is they're very, very hard cases to prosecute. So what you're seeing is the tip of a really ugly iceberg.

FLATOW: And what percentage of the tomatoes in supermarkets come from Florida?

ESTABROOK: It depends on the time of year. Right now, none. But during certain periods of the winter, virtually all the tomatoes that you'll see in the supermarket or get in a fast-food restaurant or a sandwich shop will come from Florida. Overall, Florida produces about a third of the fresh tomatoes we eat in the United States.

FLATOW: You mentioned in your book how California and Florida produce equal amounts of tomatoes, but Florida uses eight times the pesticides as California.

http://www.npr.org/2011/08/26/139972669/...n-tomatoes

[elte]

I often listen to Science Friday, and seemed to have forgotten that terrible story.  I noticed that tomatoes the store said were from Mexico tasted better a year or two before the Florida ones.  Often researchers do research in Central or South America because research regulations may be more conducive.

I wonder if there will be a tarriff placed on food imports from our close neighbor south of the border with the new chief government executive in office now.

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I wonder if there will be a tarriff placed on food imports from our close neighbor south of the border with the new chief government executive in office now.

When entertaining the pessimistic side, I kind of expect the cheap clothing and other goods from across the border and overseas that low income families purchase in Walmart to skyrocket. Not to mention the food if the agricultural industry in certain states still hasn't stocked-up on enough robotic harvesters (or even if they have, since it certainly doesn't come solely from the US year round).