Rare tomatoes on supermarket shelves delight customers with flavor and sweetness today and no one knew exactly why their great taste began fading a few decades ago. The matter has been taken seriously by a team of researchers at the Agricultural Genomics Institute in Shenzhen, a division of the Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences.

In November 2024, they published a paper in the journal Nature on how to improve the tomato flavor genetically – and in parallel they answered why the delicious taste of tomatoes was lost down the road.

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The trouble with tomatoes took a bittersweet turn in the age of industrial agriculture, according to an older study. Farmers, under the pressure of feeding a rapidly growing population, prioritized quantity over quality. Tomato varieties were carefully selected for their ability to withstand long journeys and mechanical harvesting, rather than for their taste.

Those new tomatoes, firm and uniform in appearance, could travel hundreds of miles without bruising. They ripened all at the same time and were harvested altogether. But in the process, they lost their essence - the complex flavors that once defined them.