Scientific American Tomato Articles

[Tom Wagner]

# Features 3/30/09
Slide Show: Amy Goldman's Heirloom Tomatoes
Not Your Garden-Variety Garden Tomatoes
www.sciam.com/slideshow.cfm?id=amy-goldman-heirloom-tomato&SID=mail&sc=emailfriend
The second picture is one of my all time favorite photos of tomatoes ---period.


# Features 3/30/09
How to Grow a Better Tomato: The Case against Heirloom Tomatoes
The product of archaic breeding strategies, heirloom tomatoes are hardly diverse and are no more "natural" than grocery-store varieties. New studies promise to restore their lost, healthy genes

I am going to have to read the last article again to see if the author had a change of heart about the case against heirlooms.

[Tom Wagner]

www.tomatoville.com/showthread.php?p=126224#post126224

My take on the subject on tomatoville

[canadamike]

I read it Tom, and had a very healthy laugh.

I guess intellectual masturbation has its own merits and pleasures....

Oh well!! I am more the hands on type o' guy

[Tom Wagner]

I put in a comment on the feature part of Scientific American regarding the slide show of tomatoes by Amy Goldman.

Look at picture # 2

www.sciam.com/slideshow.cfm?id=amy-goldman-heirloom-tomato&photo_id=4433CF53-F365-D871-9088FECE39A909CB&posted=1#comments

[atash]

I disagree with several of the article's claims. Although tomatoes are certainly Gondwanic and native to South America, the cultivated type reached as far as Mexico when discovered--hence the Aztec-sounding name ("Tomatl").

Christopher Columbus did not bring potatoes back to Spain. They were introduced by Gonzalo Jiminez de Quesada.

I am curious about the claim that Lycopersicon pimpinellifolium is not an ancestral tomato.

Perhaps that's the price to pay for a good, flavorful fruit? Hardly, Chetelat says, because the heirlooms' taste may have less to do with its genes than with the productivity of the plant and the growing environment. Any plant that sets only two fruits, as heirlooms sometimes do, is bound to produce juicier, sweeter and more flavorful fruit than varieties that set 100, as commercial types do.* Plus, heirlooms are sold ripened on the vine, a surefire way to get tastier results than allowing them to mature on the shelf.

I have a feeling that this article is "PR" (commercial propaganda, aka "public relations"). Something like 85% of magazine articles are planted. I notice that Monsanto receives good press in the article. Scientific American is rather notorious for sponsoring industry plants.