Those great looking — but lacking in flavor — tomatoes U.S. consumers are accustomed to soon may be a thing of the past.
There are plenty of reasons for the dearth of flavor in today's field-grown tomatoes, and an abundance of blame to go around, says Harry Klee, professor in the horticultural sciences department at the University of Florida, Gainesville.
Klee, who has been obsessed for the past 35 years with finding a commercially grown tomato that actually tastes good, says one reason really flavorful tomatoes are a rarity is that most growers are not paid to produce them.
“There's nothing in the economic system that gives them a reward or a penalty for having a tomato that doesn't taste good,” he says.
Instead of telling a breeder they want high flavor, he says, growers demand fruit that produces good yields, resists pests, and that will hold up on the trip to a supermarket hundreds or thousands of miles away. Klee says he's talked with breeders who admit that the last thing they do when they perfect a new tomato variety is taste it.
“If it doesn't taste horrible, they've got a winner,” he says. At the same time, retailers want a tomato that has long shelf life and limited shrink. And U.S. consumers, notorious for “shopping with their eyes,” want a piece of fruit that looks good and doesn't cost a lot.
In the beginning
Klee started his tomato career with Monsanto, the St. Louis-based multinational agricultural corporation, working on a long-shelf-life tomato. He operated on the principle that, if a tomato has a long shelf life, it can be allowed to ripen on the vine longer. And the riper a tomato is when it's picked, the more flavorful it is. Twenty-two years ago, Klee took his expertise with him to the University of Florida, where he says he actually found the genetic keys necessary to produce tomatoes that taste good. But it wasn't easy.
“Flavor is really difficult to breed for,” he says. “There are so many chemicals that go into flavor in the tomato.”
Using a complicated, time-consuming process, Klee and his research team identified more than 30 chemicals that determine whether consumers will like a tomato.
Next, they took about 150 tomato varieties, ranging from heirlooms to modern commercial hybrids, measured the potential flavor chemicals in each one and invited a consumer panel to sample them over a five-year period. The result was “very straightforward statistical models” that determined which flavor chemicals are in the tomatoes that participants liked, and which are in the ones they did not like.
The testing helped researchers achieve their goal of knowing exactly which chemicals in fruit contribute to flavor, Klee says.
Now he has to come up with a commercial variety that has the same great flavor but also the high yields, shelf life and pest resistance that growers prefer. “It's a work in progress, but we know exactly what we need to do,” he says. “It's just a matter of how fast can you grow the tomatoes and make the next generation.”
Garden varieties
Klee already has developed varieties for home gardeners “that are tremendously better in flavor” than store-bought tomatoes, he says.
“I've been inundated with emails nationwide from people who love them,” he says. Fresh Direct, the Long Island City, N.Y.-based home food delivery service, has received good response to a couple of the varieties Klee has developed so far. >>>
“At Fresh Direct, we're maniacal about flavor,” says Eric Stone, vice president of fresh.
Stone and company cofounder David McInerney met with Klee about three years ago as they searched for a great-tasting tomato to offer their clients.
They found some promising varieties, including Garden Gem and Garden Treasure, and launched a significant program this summer, sourcing the fruit from Lancaster Farm Fresh Co-op, Lancaster, Pa.
“They were fantastic,” Stone says. “Feedback from customers was great. We saw strong repeat purchases.”
The tomatoes balanced yields with economic viability and flavor, he says. Fresh Direct offered organic tomatoes for $3.99 per pound, which was more than conventional tomatoes “but not astronomical,” Stone says.
“People are willing to pay a premium for something that is unique and special,” he says.
The Fresh Direct website featured a photo along with a write-up that “went deep into the story of the tomato,” he says.
The tomatoes now are seasonal, but the company hopes to expand the varietals to other regions and increase their window of availability, Stone says.
Price point
So far, one of the biggest challenges Klee faces is consumers' reluctance to pay for quality. As the price of a tomato increases, the market drops proportionately, he says.
A lot of people will pay 20 cents more per pound for a better-tasting tomato, but not many will pay $1 more per pound, he says.
“If people were willing to spend more, we could give them a better tomato, and everybody could make money,” he says.
So far, that's not happening, but Klee thinks that may change.
After all, he says, people are willing to spend several dollars for a cup of coffee, and some will pay $7 or $8 for a six-pack of craft beer. So why not pay a little extra for a high-quality tomato? Sales of typical “bulk, mediocre, cardboard” tomatoes are flat despite heavy advertising, he says. “But you look at the other market where people perceive value, and it's growing like crazy.” If consumers would pay an extra 50 cents per pound for tomatoes, Klee says, “I think that growers would wake up very, very quickly and figure out that there was an opportunity there.”
Meanwhile, Klee continues his quest.
“We really have to do some pretty intensive breeding because we can't compromise any of the existing gains that the breeders have developed over the last 50 or more years,” he says.
Klee believes he could create such a tomato in less than three years if he had unlimited funding, but that's not the case. “We're doing it on the cheap,” he says. Nonetheless, he's convinced that he will achieve his goal of creating a tomato that will meet consumers' flavor and cost requirements and have the cultural attributes that growers insist on.
“It just takes time,” he says.