2 ms·
> Thousands of years of breeding have produced a fruit that often suits farmers and sellers more than consumers. Tomatoes were only brought to Europe a few hun
by kwhitefoot 8y ago
> Thousands of years of breeding have produced a fruit that often suits farmers and sellers more than consumers.
Tomatoes were only brought to Europe a few hundred years ago. I very much doubt that there was much serious breeding before that.
And there are loads that taste good, the supermarkets simply won't stock them because they make less money.
- jessriedel 8y agoI don't understand. Domestication is defined by the significant genetic changes induced by selective breeding. It's been practiced around the world, long before the industrial and scientific revolutions. For instance, pre-Colombian maize looks dramatically different than it's wild ancestor due to thousands of years of selective breeding.
- specializeded 8y agoYou’d be very much wrong about that, though development certainly seems to have accelerated once it was taken to Europe.
- JoeAltmaier 8y agoThey don't stock them, because growers don't plant them, because they don't transport or store well. More sugar means rots faster. Also, there's an enzyme(?) that forms just as the fruit ripens and gets tasty, that lets the skin split. So they pick them green, before either of those things happen. There was a gene added that stopped the skin-split effect, so you could let them ripen and still transport them, but anti-GMO folk won't let us have them?