There’s no denying that the majority of store-bought tomatoes taste bland. Now scientists have discovered that the gene TomLoxC that helps give tomatoes their flavor is missing in about 93% of modern, domesticated varieties. The discovery may help bring flavor back to tomatoes you can pick up in the produce section of grocery stores. Tomatoes lost the gene through good old-fashioned breeding — not via genetic modifications — when breeders put size over taste. In this case, bigger is definitely not better. Some genes involved in other important fruit quality traits and stress tolerance were lost during this process. The good news for tomatoe lovers is that the identification of te TomLoxC gene will be able to help breeders create better-tasting tomatoes, focusing more on flavor and lesson size. Most consumers would agree that they would rather have smaller tomatoes that taste good than bigger tomatoes that have no taste.
