Vineland research centre working on tastier tomato
Growers, sellers and consumers must all be top of mind for researchers with Vineland Research and Innovation Centre’s greenhouse tomato program.
And for that to happen, staff in various capacities must look at the tomato from a grand scale right down to the microscopic level.
The public recently got to peek into the greenhouses that are home to the research centre’s bright red tomatoes to learn how those researchers are working to make a better tomato.
Amy Bowan, research director for the Consumer Insights program, said the goal is to create a variety for which “sellers want to sell it and producers want to grow it.”
First, Bowan and her team must figure out what makes a tomato desirable to consumers. For that, the centre’s trained sensory panel gets to work. The panel is a group of professional taste testers who can suss out individual characteristics of each tomato variety. From 60 tomatoes that were profiled, the panel developed 20 terms to describe tomatoes, such as firmness or sweetness. Researchers figure out which tomatoes are preferred among consumers, and armed with their knowledge from the sensory panel can create a preference map for tomatoes.
It’s the job of the rest of the program team to create a tomato hybrid variety that outperforms the industry standard. But not just in taste, it also has to be commercially viable for growers and grocers.
Research scientists Valerio Primomo, in vegetable breeding, and David Liscombe, in biochemistry, must create a plant variety whose fruit meets the standards from a taste perspective, but also checks off a number of other boxes: The cluster of fruits on the vines are roughly the same size and weight totalling about 750 grams, yield is sufficient enough for greenhouse operators, disease resistance, even shelf life after the tomatoes on are harvested.
“The first goal was to develop the parental lines,” said Primomo.
From there they create all sorts of combinations and test those hybrids.While all this is happening, Liscombe is looking at the flavour of tomatoes under a microscope. Literally.
“Flavour is very complex,” he said.
Sugars, acids and aromas all impact flavour.
The chemistry of two foods can be similar and produce vastly different flavour profiles, Liscombe said. Take, for instance, the hexyl acetate ester, an aroma compound. In apples, its presence produces a preferred flavour.
“But in a tomato consumers do not like high levels,” he said.
The centre’s first batch of hybrids are being sent out to producers. Liscombe said in a few years consumers should be seeing Vineland variety tomatoes on vine on the shelves at the grocery store.
When that happens the varieties will be entering a sector that’s big business.
Justine Taylor, science and government relations manager with the Ontario Greenhouse Vegetable Growers, says tomatoes are a big part of the $1.6 billion that represents sales of greenhouse-grown peppers, cucumbers and tomatoes in the province each year.
The goal of the program is to create an Ontario-specific tomato that “thrives under the climatic conditions of Ontario and meets the needs of the consumer,” she said.