Tomato Flavor and Tomato Flavor Breeding

[William S.]

Reading Craig LeHoullier's book and his tomato flavor descriptions are very interesting. He claims that flavor is somewhat independent of color. I prior conception is that red tomatoes, bicolor tomatoes, etc. tend to cluster. However, have found red tomatoes in the XL line of the promiscuous tomato project that tasted great. Also have found some weird off tastes and last summer I saved seed from three plants I thought had particularly good flavor. One relatively ordinary, one very fruity with hardly any seed, and one with seed and wonderful flavor. Next year I plan to grow out the latter and will thus really be deep diving into flavor breeding.

I want to start doing tomato tastings. Covid be gone!

I am curious what the potential is for short season tomatoes and flavor diversity.

[Steph S]

My preconceptions about tomato flavor have changed completely over the past decade.  And my preferences have changed too.
I always associated the red tomato with "classic" flavors, I guess some combination of a strong umami and a balance of tangy and sweet.
Then I discovered the range of complexity and combinations of flavors, especially brought out by sweetness, which don't lean nearly so hard on the classic umami, even some don't really taste like 'tomatoes', they are reminiscent of other fruits instead.
I agree that flavor and color aren't exactly linked.
I associated yellow and bicolor with lighter, fruitier tastes, but over the years I've had some yellow tomatoes that taste exactly like red ones.  In a blind test, I would've guessed red.
I do think that gf makes a contribution to flavor that is distinctive and may be 'guessable' in some cases at least.
Even in an F1 involving gf/- it seems to add a richer taste.
Some Beta orange tomatoes taste 'carroty'.   
A lot of tangerine orange tomatoes have a unique mild flavor which may be from the prolycopene, IDK.
But there are a ton of 'flavor' compounds in tomatoes that have nothing to do with color at all.

[William S.]

Craig Includes a top 10 List in his book.
Nepal, Yellow Oxheart, Polish, Green Giant, Sun Gold F1, Lucky Cross (His own work), Lillian's Yellow Heirloom, Brandywine, Cherokee Purple, and Mexico Midget.

The only one of those I can remember tasting for sure is Sun Gold F1. I like Sun Gold I also like most of the descendants of Sungold I've tasted. I can't rule out having never tried Cherokee Purple and Brandywine if so, I don't know and I don't know how different Mexico Midget is from other pimpinillifolium types.

My top flavor varieties would be Amethyst Cream, Coyote, every stable yellow, red bicolor I've tasted about equally, terrior galapagos, Sun Gold F1, maybe some of the XL red line of Joseph's promiscuous project, and definitely the orange bicolor tropical fruit promiscuous project segregate from 2021.

We had a Green Berkeley Tie Dye gifted us last summer, I saved some seeds, huge tomato. Can't remember if it was spectacular flavor but it was good. Huge was the overwhelming factor though.

I can't remember how I feel particularly about some of the green tomatoes I've tried- they were fun for variety for sure. Also, the only white slicer I've ever grown was fun but not necessarily remarkable flavor wise.

[Steph S]

I will probably never grow most of the top ten on Craig's list because they are too long season for us, even in a greenhouse.  The famous large fruited heirlooms are worth growing though, as a reference point for great tastes.   I do think that flavor varies depending on the season and climate, so I wouldn't discount the possibility of finding others that are better suited and also serve to breed for exceptional taste and large fruit.
I know Karen Oliver has done some great work with Lucky Cross, and some of them may be earlier enough for me to enjoy here.  I did grow Karma Pink which was an excellent tomato with lots of complexity for a small fruit, but they were really late compared to my own lines, and suffered from the miserable cold year it happened to be.  I'd like to try her others when I'm anticipating a warm summer.

Cherokee Purple is the only one listed that I know, it's one of a group of outstanding black beefs that taste very similar, with a sweetness that brings out the complexity, and the great silky texture that you only get with beefs.  We have grown a number of them here,  Vorlon didn't like the cold and was stingy, Indian Stripe did the best for me so that is the one I used for breeding.  CP had the largest fruits, for us, but it was unreliable having off years with low production.  All of them are 'end of season' fruit for us here, even in a greenhouse.  Black Cherry is the other black parent I used for flavor, and does seem to produce pretty consistently tasty offspring.  The downside is that it has been used by a lot of breeders, so I suppose we are risking a 'bottleneck' by overusing the same parents.  Overall I like blacks, and there are lots with flavor potential.
Pink Berkeley Tie Die for example is a great black, with a distinctive flavor all its own.  They sadly have zero shelf life, going from primo ripe to a puddle of mush quite suddenly. 
I haven't really explored the green-when-ripe taste that people are so excited about.  Grew Malachite Box once, and did not enjoy the anxiety of "when is it ripe".   

I would love to try the large yellows on his list.  We grew several from Eastern European sources, which are a bit earlier.  My favorite yellows have been cherries - Galinas, Medovaya Kaplya - with a more intense sweet fruity taste. Fred Hempel's Blush is another really good one, but you have to pick at a certain point to get optimal flavor.     But some other yellows I found very different, tasting more like a red (in my mind!) with more tang and umami.   I got a huge range of different tastes coming from a cross between divergent tasting yellows.  I agree with you that bicolor I've grown have been consistently pleasant and fruity-sweet. 

I think unusual flavors can often come from the crosses with wild relatives.  Coyote for example, and another similar cherry I grew, taste downright wierd.  I didn't personally like either of them but I appreciate that others do.  The white "Lotos" had a similar hint of IDK odd flavor which I didn't mind but was not as enthused as others.   

I don't know where the 'other fruit' tastes come from, but there are many examples.  Tangerine fruit tend to taste a bit 'melony' to me.  Anna Russian was one of the first different tasting tomatoes I ever grew - it tasted more like watermelon than what I expected from a tomato.

I had an F2 segregate with 'tropical fruit' taste in a cross of Zolotoe Serdtse and Indian Stripe, but didn't recover it in half dozen F3 and F4 - and didn't find a determinate either.  That is the same line that I recovered some determinates from in 2021, so perhaps will get interesting flavors from those down the line.  I hope yours turns up in the next generation, William. 
Would you consider stabilizing a 'tropical fruit' tasting tomato?

[William S.]

Well stablizing that tropical fruit taste is kind of a main goal for 2022. Or at least finding out whatever more a grow out of 100+ seeds from that plant can tell me. The plant was in my large 2022 grow out block of Joseph Lofthouse's promiscuous project elites. It has open anther cones and exserted stigmas. It has at least the possibility of obligate outcrossing. Even if it out crossed at say 30% that could mean 30% of its offspring could have other flavors. I'm not convinced the 2022 grow out will capture that flavor for sure. It is even possible the flavor I tasted is somehow dependent on heterozygosity. That may be the case with sun gold F1, there are lots of dehybridizations on the market. Craig asserts none of them are as good. I haven't tried many but my own segregants I've grown taste good. I did get one ossi registered one I think to grow out in 2022.

Interestingly Blush, black cherry, and Galina were all Christmas presents that I got this year. Haven't grown them previously.

[Steph S]

Yeah I have wondered about flavor and heterozygosity.  Like you say, Sungold is a common example, where it's not easily recovered in a stable OP. 

OTOH I have had several lines that were surprisingly stable for good taste genetics even from early generations and remained so, with only a few outliers turning up that didn't meet taste criteria.  Siblings in those lines were very subtle to distinguish and choose a 'best' representative.
Other lines, you need to dig deeper by growing more plants.   Even a sibling F2 line, compared to the strangely stable ones, might take ten or a dozen plants to find a couple that are outstanding for taste against a background of very similar and 'good but not remarkable' sibs.

Then with the taste divergent parents, you can really produce a wild array of F2 tastes, and again in F3, still segregating F4!   IDK if F5s will start to settle down.  Just the sheer number of flavor components is enough to make it a crazy lottery.
So it may just be a bit of a coin toss, as to whether the important flavor genetics are recessive or dominant, or both parents have in common the same recessive trait(s), or they might have traits epistatic to one another (!).  Or QTL's that add and or subtract from one another...

The outcrossing issue is something else.  Obligate outcrossing would pretty much rule out a repeat of your tropical taste in next generation, although not impossible it could turn up again in a population of outcrossing siblings of that line.  Did you get lots of fruit set on it?   

You should definitely try those three cherries.  High taste ratings generally among tomato growers, not just me.

[William S.]

I didn't get a huge amount of fruit set. I had the parent in a row that didn't get as much water as some others and the plant was small. So I think I have somewhere around 200 seeds. If I get good germination that could mean lots of plants though. If it had been a big plant, I could have thousands of seeds and be direct seeding them for 2022! That may yet happen in 2023!

I'll be interested to taste those three. I have exploded in my tomato hobby but as a tomato collector I still have a lot of boring red short season tomatoes despite some significant additions. I'm not sure if I can grow a lot of those long season best flavored tomatoes Craig recommends. Reading Craigs book it is really clear how a good collection can inform breeding.

Looking up the dwarfs I've obtained for 2022 yesterday it was interesting to see Green Giant in the background of Dwarf Kelley Green. Craig said in his podcast that the whole Sneezy family and everything they've crossed with green giant turned out tasty.

I suppose overusing certain tasty parents might lead to some genetic bottlenecking, but I think making crosses in general is good for tomato diversity.

It seems to me like the dwarf tomato project may have been a little over focused on heirloom x heirloom crosses for that same reason. Also, if there is some vulnerability in the genes for dwarfism that could ultimately be bad! Though it's possible that rugose dwarfism may not be monophyletic in its source as it can't seemingly all be tracked back to one variety. 

I say crossing tomatoes broadly is probably a good way to go with tomato breeding. Though the wild species work is very long term! I feel like the domestic x domestic crosses are yielding very fun results in the F2. Domestic x Wild I think the BH x W4 crosses were the start of edibility in the habrochaites crosses Joseph made. Seems like either really large grow outs, time, and dilution can be necessary. Though if some amazing flavors and other features also come from the wild it may be worth it in the long run! If I got some LA2329 crosses this year it may be some time before fuzzy insect resistant edible tomatoes result!

[Steph S]

I must admit that I grew a pimpinellifolium once - the taste was so revolting, I couldn't eat a single fruit.   So ended any thoughts of starting from scratch and breeding with wild relatives.   Being dependent on a greenhouse to grow tomatoes here,  I don't have the space to grow things that aren't an edible crop, so I just have to breed with bona fide already tamed tomatoes, for something we can eat at every stage of the process.

IDK what to think about bottlenecks in tomatoes, which seem to be so diverse in so many ways that matter. 

But still I have no doubt that you'll find some really exotic tastes in those wide wild crosses.

[William S.]

I am not an adventurous eater like Joseph. I haven't managed to bring myself to try a peruvianum, penellii, habrochaites, or arcanum all of which I have grown and gotten good seed back from. I don't think I tried any of the hybrids Joseph made very seriously until 2020 when they got good. In 2021 I was pickier with them though. I think I was just so excited to finally have something tasty looking from all that unpalatable tomato growing in 2017-2019 that I wasn't too critical in 2020. Now after being picky in 2021, I have a couple lines with one year of selection for no off tastes from all that work.

I guess I haven't grown a wide enough range of pimpinillifolium as the few I've grown seemed ok. Though not as good as Craig seems to think Mexico Midget is! Just kind of run of the mill red tomato flavor is what I recall.

One caveat is that I just realized I do not have that full of a collection of existing tomato flavors. I thought it was pretty good with such exotic things as Big Hill, Pineapple, Green Zebra, Michael Pollan, Blue Gold, Blue Ambrosia, White Shah, Coyote, Terrior Cheesemanii and of course my own Mission Mountain Sunrise but all the bicolors taste about the same to me. Most of my oranges are descendants of Sungold F1 and kind of have elements of that same flavor. I think that is more or less how I would describe exserted orange as well and I've wondered if that could be the mystery donor. The yellows mostly taste good with occasional exceptions- off tastes, the reds all about tasted the same to me with slight variation and the occasional eye opener. For instance, I have a packet of what I would consider a nice, flavored red cherry tucked away from an older Joseph Lofthouse mix and the first XL line red I tasted in 2020 just tasted so smooth. So I might not know what I am talking about when I find something nice in the wild cross segregates. Wish I had Craig Lehouillier to come to a taste testing! Or Joseph and Carol from their writings I suspect their palates are much more sophisticated than mine. I might have an idea for a local tasting though. It would be really neat if I could get some community selection going in my valley. 

[Steph S]

I have a small core panel of tasters who get roped in to the selection process, and the OP trials.  It really helps. 
When a taste selection is confirmed independently by three people, I feel confident about it.
Always hoping not to hear those three damning words... "It's a tomato".

[William S.]

https://m.facebook.com/groups/562461940798897/permalink/1536513983393683/?m_entstream_source=feed_mobile&anchor_reactions=true

Not sure how many folks can look at this? Facebook group people listing best tasting tomatoes. I see a few familiar names including some I have seed to try in 2022. Including Brad's atomic grape and dwarf Fred's tie dye. Also, a similar posting about earlies on the same group which makes me think there might be some early dwarfs that Victory seed lists as 80 DTM.