To tell the truth, I am a farmer, this matter! Hey! How to say it! In fact, this is something that everyone knows. You said that in today's world, no matter what you do, you should pay attention to efficiency, or there is a nifty buzzword "everything is money-oriented", which sounds a bit lacking in "positive energy", but if you don't do this, there will be no good economic benefits!
Tomatoes are definitely not as delicious as before. It is pure natural, that is, it does not use chemical fertilizers or hormones. Naturally mature, very familiar, the red skin is almost cracked, and it tastes sweet, noodles. That smell is really a word "great"! Now tomatoes are also called tomatoes? What is that? I am a farmer, and no one can tell who is good or bad! It's all about money. In order to go on the market early and sell at a good price, tomatoes are sold on the market from seedling stage to shelf. They are all fed with medicine. They look good on the outside, but in fact they have red skin. When they are cut, the tendons inside are still white. They are all green persimmons with ripening agents. They are delicious!
So, there are no delicious tomatoes now, only a few delicious ones, which are not available in the market. You have to keep them for yourself. Do you understand, my friend? That's the truth!
Why do tomatoes taste bad now? So what kind of tomatoes are delicious? How to eat "delicious" tomatoes?
First, after the improvement of the current tomato varieties, the tomato skin will become very thick, which is mainly for the convenience of transportation, making tomatoes more drought-resistant, frost-resistant and more beautiful in appearance.
Secondly, most tomatoes on the market are ripening, and there will be some drug residues such as ripening agents. Tomatoes are not naturally mature tomatoes. This kind of tomatoes generally have no tomato seeds. Some tomatoes will also use pesticides such as insect resistance and lodging resistance during their growth.
Third, tomatoes are not picked in season, which violates the natural growth law of tomatoes. The tomatoes planted in the greenhouse were not ripe when they were picked. Such tomatoes are easy to transport and can be preserved for a long time. When they are picked, they are still green, and they will turn red overnight under the action of hormones, such as ethylene, a red promoter. How can such tomatoes have a natural taste, let alone taste and nutrition?
Here's a little way to choose tomatoes:
1, look at the shape, choose round tomatoes, we don't choose tomatoes with high pointed bottom, angular edges or irregular shapes.
2, look at the color, choose pink, the skin has white spots, feel the surface has a layer of light powder, and the pedicle has a layer of light cyan.
3, look at the feel, gently pinch the tomatoes, choose thin and elastic skin, do not soft couch, if you feel that the weight in your hand is very light, these are hollow and swollen tomatoes.
4, cut, tomato seeds are khaki, meat is red, and the flesh is juicy.
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The first reason is that the genes of tomatoes have been changed. I don't know if you have noticed that the tomatoes on the market now are big and beautiful, and the colors are even. Those tomatoes that are small, grotesque and uneven in color are rare. Moreover, tomatoes are harder now than before. If you accidentally drop it on the ground, it is not easy to rot, and it is very convenient to store.
This is because most customers prefer high-value tomatoes when choosing tomatoes, and hard tomatoes are not easy to be damaged when they collide during transportation, which can reduce the losses of farmers.
Therefore, tomato breeding experts pursue the beauty and hardness of tomato varieties according to market demand, but the breeding experts have not achieved the best of both worlds. When tomatoes become hard, their skins will thicken and there will be less juice in them.
As tomatoes get bigger and redder, their taste gets worse. You know, tomatoes that are getting worse and worse are not the result of breeding, but gradually formed over a long period of time.
The second reason is the pursuit of economic benefits by large-scale agriculture. Have you ever tried growing your own tomatoes? The tomatoes grown by ourselves are definitely better than those grown in the supermarket. Because tomatoes in supermarkets are planted in large-scale agriculture, in order to pursue higher interests, farmers will inject hormones to promote the growth of tomatoes during the planting process, which greatly shortens the growth cycle of tomatoes and the maturity of fruits. Moreover, the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and hormones will dilute the original taste of tomatoes, and tomatoes will become more and more unpalatable.
The origin of tomatoes is the Andes in the United States. Bolivia, Peru and other regions also have a large number of wild varieties, which are the original tomatoes. Tomatoes on the market are genetically modified.
Because most of the tomatoes produced now are induced by hormones to expand the pistil ovary and develop into a mature tomato ovary. Because this tomato has not been pollinated naturally, it may not secrete some flavor substances, which leads to the loss of tomato flavor.
The most convenient way to distinguish hormone flowering from pollinated tomato is to see if it has seeds.
The first reason is that the genes of tomatoes have been changed. I don't know if you have noticed that the tomatoes on the market now are big and beautiful, and the colors are even. Those tomatoes that are small, grotesque and uneven in color are rare. Moreover, tomatoes are harder now than before. If you accidentally drop it on the ground, it is not easy to rot, and it is very convenient to store.
This is because most customers prefer high-value tomatoes when choosing tomatoes, and hard tomatoes are not easy to be damaged when they collide during transportation, which can reduce the losses of farmers.
Therefore, tomato breeding experts pursue the beauty and hardness of tomato varieties according to market demand, but the breeding experts have not achieved the best of both worlds. When tomatoes become hard, their skins will thicken and there will be less juice in them.
As tomatoes get bigger and redder, their taste gets worse. You know, tomatoes that are getting worse and worse are not the result of breeding, but gradually formed over a long period of time.
The second reason is the pursuit of economic benefits by large-scale agriculture. Have you ever tried growing your own tomatoes? The tomatoes grown by ourselves are definitely better than those grown in the supermarket. Because tomatoes in supermarkets are planted in large-scale agriculture, in order to pursue higher interests, farmers will inject hormones to promote the growth of tomatoes during the planting process, which greatly shortens the growth cycle of tomatoes and the maturity of fruits. Moreover, the use of chemical fertilizers, pesticides and hormones will dilute the original taste of tomatoes, and tomatoes will become more and more unpalatable.
The origin of tomatoes is the Andes in the United States. Bolivia, Peru and other regions also have a large number of wild varieties, which are the original tomatoes. Tomatoes in the market are genetically modified, and farmers, driven by interests, no longer care about quality.
Everyone had a plate of white sugar mixed with tomatoes when he was a child, which could relieve the heat and satisfy his appetite. At that time, tomatoes were sour and sweet, sandy, with ripe and soft flesh and rich flavor. Fruit juice was mixed with melted sugar, and I don't know how many children licked the plates. I don't know when sugar is still that sugar, but tomatoes are not the tomatoes they used to be. The tomatoes we can eat now are very hard to the touch, and they don't drip when cut, but they taste very weak, neither sour nor sweet when eaten in one bite. This makes countless people who have loved tomatoes have questions: Are our mouths clumsy when we grow up, or are tomatoes really tasteless now?
It is true that tomatoes taste bad.
When it comes to tomatoes, many people's first feeling is that they are not as sweet as before.
Tomatoes are not sweet/fresh
The sweet and sour taste of tomato corresponds to the appropriate sweetness, acidity and the "sugar-acid ratio" between them. Generally speaking, when the chromaticity of tomato reaches 20% of the fully mature color, the "sugar-acid ratio" is in the best position [1], and the high "sugar-acid ratio" is sweet to eat, otherwise it will be sour to eat. Shanghai Academy of Agricultural Sciences measured 3 1 variety of red tomato, and found that the "sugar-acid ratio" and "soluble sugar content" decreased by 26. 12% and 17.67% respectively compared with traditional varieties. Twenty kinds of red fruit tomatoes were tested. Compared with traditional varieties, the ratio of sugar to acid and soluble sugar content decreased by 22. 17% and11.60% respectively [2]. The ratio of sugar to acid and sugar content are decreasing, which is why tomatoes now feel obviously not sweet or even sour.
The decrease of sugar content and certain volatile compounds has brought a heavy blow to the taste of tomato /unsplash.
Secondly, tomatoes have a taste now: there is no unique taste of tomatoes. Odor is realized by some volatile compounds, such as alcohols, aldehydes, terpenoids and so on. 1kg tomato has only 2mg of volatile compounds, which have a small content, but have a great influence, even affecting the "taste" of the tongue. For example, geraniol is more delicious than the same tomatoes and varieties with high geraniol content, while those tomatoes in the supermarket do have lower geraniol content [1]. A roadmap for improving tomato flavor published in Science tasted more than 100 kinds of tomatoes through tasting experiments. Through analysis, it was found that there were 33 kinds of substances affecting tomato flavor, including 29 kinds of volatile substances. Then, the researchers analyzed the contents of flavor substances in 398 tomatoes from all over the world, and conducted gene sequencing and bioinformatics experiments. It was found that some gene loci controlling fruit flavor were lost during tomato breeding, which led to a significant decrease in the content of volatile substance 13 affecting flavor in modern tomato varieties [3]. Therefore, whether through the direct feeling of human tongue and nose or advanced technical means such as gene sequencing, it can be judged that tomatoes are unpalatable now, which is true!
Modern tomatoes keep their face value,
Sacrifice the taste
In fact, although tomatoes have not been renamed, the best-selling varieties in supermarkets today are different from those planted in their backyard 10 years ago. Great changes have taken place in tomatoes in these decades. I don't know if you still remember those delicious tomatoes when you were a child, but you can't help putting them away and they will become soft and rotten in a few days. However, modern tomatoes, put on for a month, are still tight and radiant.
Tomatoes become soft and wrinkled, which will greatly affect the perception and sales/freshness.
Tomato can be divided into soft fruit type and hard fruit type according to fruit hardness. Soft-fruit tomatoes, such as wool flour and refined flour series varieties, have thin skin, soft meat and rich taste, but they are not resistant to storage, resulting in high loss during transportation; However, hard fruit tomatoes, such as Jin Peng, Oudun, Fenbaili and other varieties, have higher hardness, better storage resistance and higher economic benefits. In the past, tomatoes were all grown locally and sold locally, but with the expansion of the city, transportation abroad became more and more important. So those soft fruit tomatoes are gradually replaced by hard fruit tomatoes.
Beautiful and durable, resistant to beating. If the taste is worse, maybe not many people will care /unsplash.
So how hard is the hard fruit? Someone did an experiment: put three hard tomatoes on the table, pick up a heavy book and put it down. When the tomato was smashed, 16.44 kilograms of books had fallen on it. The study also proved that the hardness of modern tomatoes increased from 6.86 to 12. 10[4] compared with 30 years ago. In other words, the tomatoes we buy in the supermarket now are about twice as hard as they were 30 years ago. It can be called "stone tomato".
People always like high-value products, and tomatoes are no exception
From soft fruit tomato with thin skin and juicy feet to "drupe tomato" with light taste, it is precisely the so-called "variety domestication and improvement", which is the result of people's intentional choice. In addition to consciously choosing hard fruit tomatoes for transportation, the preference of fruit farmers for beautiful big fruits leads to the selection of genotypes with low sugar content in most varieties during breeding. It is mentioned in the road map of tomato flavor improvement that some gene loci controlling fruit flavor are lost in modern tomatoes. There is a gene called SlGLK2, which can promote the formation of chloroplasts and then capture light energy to convert carbon dioxide and water into more sugar. However, the existence of chloroplasts will make tomatoes appear uneven turquoise, resulting in poor color. Therefore, long-term artificial cultivation of tomato with bright red color and beautiful appearance leads to the inactivation of SlGLK2 gene, which directly affects the sugar content of tomato [5].
Blue-green wild tomatoes are not beautiful, but they can be sweet/not astringent.
In addition, the gene loci affecting fruit size and sugar content are also in the same region of chromosome, which means that if the big fruit gene is selected, the sugar content will be sacrificed [3]. It is precisely because of the long-term artificial selection of the direction-face value, not flavor, that the gene loci that contribute greatly to sugar content are lost. This is why many tomatoes in modern supermarkets look big and red, but they taste tasteless.
2021101October 22nd, Changzhou, Jiangsu, tomatoes were sold in the supermarket. Good-looking, durable and fight-resistant. If the taste is worse, maybe not many people will care/vision china.
At the same time, the common "early picking behavior" in the market now also has an impact on the flavor of tomatoes. There are five stages of tomato fruit ripening: green ripening stage, discoloration stage, semi-ripening stage, ripening stage and complete ripening stage. Different varieties of tomatoes correspond to the best picking time. For example, if it is only sold locally, the storage-resistant hard fruit type has the best taste when it is ripe, and the storage-resistant varieties have the best quality when it is semi-ripe. If it is to be shipped to other places for sale, the picking period should be advanced [6]. In practice, in order to improve the shelf life and reduce the transportation loss, tomatoes are often picked at the green ripe stage and then ripened during storage and transportation. Therefore, tomatoes on the market look bright red, but in fact, due to premature picking, the conversion from starch to sugar has not been completed, and many flavor substances have not yet formed, but some flavor substances will be lost, and the flavor is naturally not much better [6].
Cutting too early or too late is not good for the quality of West Mangrove /unsplash.
Of course, cultivation methods will also affect the flavor of fruits and vegetables, such as the formation of sugar. In the past, tomatoes were cultivated in season to adapt to light and temperature, but now they are mostly cultivated out of season. Light and temperature can't meet the best demand of tomato growth, so even the same tomato will have different flavors. In short, for decades, driven by the market, tomatoes have become both beautiful and unpalatable!
Maybe in the future.
Have you ever eaten "childhood" tomatoes?
It is understandable that the market pursues profits. For most fruit farmers, there seems to be no reason to give up modern tomato varieties. But more and more consumers miss the sweet and full delicious tomatoes when they were young. Can this generation of young people still eat tomatoes with "childhood flavor"? The answer is possible. In fact, in recent years, academic breeding experts have been trying to "save tomatoes". For example, they tried to develop high-value and high-flavor tomato varieties by means of "reviving flavor genes". In 20 19 years, researchers found gene variants of TomLoxC in 725 tomato varieties, which can participate in the production of carotenoids and make tomatoes have good flavor [7]. It can be said that it is only a matter of time before tomatoes with "childhood flavor" come back to life.
On June 27th, 20 17, cherry tomato/vision china was photographed at the 20 17 tomato variety exhibition held in Changping, Beijing.
Among the existing tomato varieties, there are also many varieties with excellent flavor that are worth trying. For example, the variety "Provence" is closer to the variety we ate when we were young than the common hard-fruit tomatoes on the market-the skin is thin and juicy, the flesh is not hollow, and it has the unique rich flavor of tomatoes [8]. Another example is "Strawberry Persimmon", also known as Tiepi Persimmon, which is a kind of big pink fruit with a little green shoulders, but it tastes sweet and crisp, unexpectedly sweet, with soft pulp and the highest sugar content of more than 9 degrees. Sweet and sour, rich in flavor, it is a food between vegetables and fruits [9].
Only by choosing the right variety can you eat better tomatoes /unsplash.
There are also Millennium tomatoes, small red fruits with thin skin and delicious taste, which often serve as fruits [10]. Nowadays, it is popular to grow vegetables on the balcony, and some simple and easy-to-live vegetables are planted on the balcony by soil culture or hydroponics. Witness the changes from seeds to fruits, and let people find the pleasure of planting in ungrounded cities. Tomatoes are a kind of vegetable crop that likes warm and light, and can be planted on the balcony of Chaoyang, especially in spring and summer [1 1]. If you want to try to grow your own tomatoes, there are many varieties to choose from, such as Meidai, red peach and red cherry. , are sweet and sour, full of flavor.
Anyway, there are some delicious tomatoes. As for the taste of tomatoes that can't compare with memory, it may depend on how thick your childhood filter is.
Author | Jia Hui
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[7] Janet Malantos. (20 19). tasteless tomatoes may be eliminated. Their taste genes are reproduced. Los Angeles Times website.
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Very sour. It used to be sweet.
Because they are all ripened by drugs, they are not naturally grown.