How to tell if your tomatoes are naturally grown or rushed to ripen: insights from a horticulture expert

Every day, the stalls in the markets and aprozaza are filled with more and more tomatoes that the traders tell us are “Romanian” and “natural” or even “organic”. And supermarkets are increasing their offer of tomatoes, as the hot summer days approach, when Romanians buy them in large quantities.

The question is: how do we tell which tomatoes were grown at a natural rate and which were rushed to ripen? Can we tell by the appearance, by the firmness of the fruit or maybe by the taste?

Costel Vânătoru, Ph.D. in horticulture and researcher with 37 years of experience, explained it to us. He was the director of the Research and Development Station for Vegetable Cultivation in Buzău and is the creator of the Genetic Resources Bank, where the seeds of over 10,000 vegetable varieties are stored, including over 3,000 tomato varieties.

We have plenty of tomato varieties on the market. They are big and small, different colors. Some are woody, others soft. Many are imported, whether the information is clearly stated on the label or not. Can we tell which ones were raised naturally and which ones were rushed to ripen? How does a horticulturist know when he goes shopping?

Let’s say that an experienced horticulturist would recognize tomatoes that are stimulated or treated with prohibited substances. But it’s difficult. Those that give us the certainty that there was an intervention or not are the laboratory analyses.

It’s a time when it’s hard to tell if something is good or not.

For example, we have tomatoes that come from Turkey or other areas (outside the EU space – ed.) and where some substances are widely used that are prohibited in our country.

And I don’t know how well the ones coming from there are controlled. There would be institutions that would do these checks, but you realize that we are not very good at this chapter now.

We say that we are ready for Schengen, but we have some cracks, if prohibited substances enter the country and we then distribute them.

We don’t have enough laboratories. If you watch, you’ll see that there are food alerts. There are batches of food in which – after they were sold – it was confirmed that they were infested. And what else to do at that point?

So we have problems in the area of ​​imports.

On the domestic area, maybe in certain areas and during certain periods. Like now, when perhaps many have been tempted to use tomato ripening accelerators to get them on the market and get a better price.

You see, there were cases where banned substances were used, even in large quantities. The Police intervened and did well.

But after June 15th, we shouldn’t have this problem anymore, because it’s getting warmer.

It’s a time when the stalls are filled with tomatoes labeled “Romanian product”. Would they really all be Romanian?

Let’s say we find a tomato that the merchant says is Romanian and that has no seeds.

We know that there are no indigenous varieties of seedless tomatoes. So the tomato could be falsely labeled. And it could be imported tomato, in which case the problems I talked about can occur.

Or it could be a tomato from imported seed grown here. In this case, we are not necessarily talking about potentially dangerous tomatoes. It is not a Romanian variety, it is an imported hybrid, but which was grown in Romania.

If the tomato has no taste or if we cut it and find woody parts, does it mean that it has been treated with prohibited substances?

I would start by saying that the taste and aroma of tomatoes is given by a complex of more than 400 substances.

You can think of each plant as a micro-refinery of a precision and finesse that chemists struggle to penetrate and master.

As with wines, you can say that a variety has a certain acidity, for example. And a very good specialist could even recognize – even if blindfolded – the taste and aroma of some of the varieties, which have distinct characteristics.

How to get here? From its flower stage, in 55 days, the tomato develops and turns into a ball of chlorophyll.

There are small tomatoes that reach 10 grams, such as the cherry ones, or some large ones – such as those of the ox heart variety – that reach a kilogram each. Then growth stops and they remain in the green stage.

And that’s where the leverage begins. Maturation. Baking, in popular terms. This ripening stage also lasts almost 55 days.

Only in some varieties this period is shorter. In the sense that it takes about 35-40 days. But this only in the earliest varieties, which are rare.

As a rule, it takes a long time for the biodegradation of chlorophyll pigments and their transformation into lycopene, into carotene, into vitamins, into salts… into all those 400 substances that, combined, make us happy when we taste the fruit.

All this maturation is gradual. In the fruit there is an army of enzymes doing their job. From its stalk stage, the fruit begins to gradually ripen until it turns red.

The reddening starts at the tip of the fruit and goes towards the stalk. The fruit turns completely red and then that red becomes more intense.

What do we mean by this? That a natural process of ripening a tomato takes quite a long time.

Those substances that some vegetable growers use only shorten this period from green to red, these phenophases.

And that’s why in tomatoes that have been treated with ripening accelerators, the taste is diminishedbecause the fruit does not have time to process and harmonize the 400 substances, balance and settle them.

There is also the issue of storage. A naturally grown tomato, in the post-ripening period, lasts 5-10 days. Then it breaks down.

One that has been interfered with various substances holds more.

Hence another temptation for the grower to choose seed from which to make large and woody tomatoes, to which he also intervenes with substances, so that they last longer.

So a woody and tasteless tomato, necessarily a chemical tomato?

In general, there are 2 situations in which we can have a wood tomato when:

1) it’s made from some imported seeds (and 95% of our tomatoes are from imported seeds). These tomatoes are not dangerous, they are just not as soft and tasty as we would like them to be.

2) it was intervened with chemical substances, possibly even with some prohibited substances. How were the cases identified by the police..

Does the shape of the tomato tell us anything?

We were among the first in Romania to translate and work on the tomato chromosome map. On the eyelashes, that is.

And yes, there is a gene in tomatoes that transmits that mucron, the pointed tip of the tomato.

But in the commercial area, there are few hybrids that naturally have that mucron. There is a hybrid brought from Bulgaria called Prekos and there are still some that have this characteristic.

But to these tomatoesthe mucron is there, but not very pronounced.

They are hybrids that are cultivated here because they are tasty and early. Many people appreciate them. I also appreciate them for their taste.

Especially since with the Tomato Program – which wants to stimulate early production – Prekos are grown, for example. Even if it is not a hybrid with a very high production (the farmer hopes to earn the crop that he can sell more expensively because it is early – ed.).

But most of the tomatoes on the market got the mucron because they were stimulated with substances to speed up ripening.

It’s something to keep in mind. But even here, in the end, it is the laboratory analysis that clearly establishes how things are, from case to case.

In this case, what should we do when we go to the market? We cannot do laboratory analysis there, on the spot…

Normally, markets should be organized in such a way that you have a sector with organic producers, a non-organic sector, but where all the producers come, and a sector of traders.

And then, if you want, you can buy directly from the manufacturer. You know him. Maybe at some point you can visit their farm too. And if you convince yourself, for example, that he uses the Prekos variety and that the tomatoes he gives you look like those of that variety, you can buy it with confidence.

That would be a solution.

On the other hand, if you see that mucron is excessively large… surely no one would believe the producer when he says that the tomato is healthy and has not been stimulated.

I have been working in research for 37 years. And I can tell you that Romanian research has been underfunded.

In the area of ​​creations for tomato greenhouses and solariums – and not only tomatoes – Romania is deficient.

It shouldn’t be like this. It is an impotence of Romanian research.

In protected spaces – i.e. in greenhouses and solariums – F1 hybrids are used. And this type of hybrids is difficult to obtain, with a high-level research, not with a subsistence one, as was tried in Romania especially after 1990.

You need investments in equipment, in resources and in people to be able to achieve that heterosis phenomenon (increasing vitality, productivity – ed.) and to be able to keep up with international companies.

I managed to get something like that. There were hybrids that they got that were in demand in the market and are still being sold.

But I did it with sacrifices of my own. In 37 years of research I had about 3 weeks of vacation. I saw the sea for the first time in 2012.

This is because I wanted to do something for this country and for research. And that’s why we created the gene bank, which now has over 3,000 tomato varieties.

Because I said it was necessary to save the Romanian varieties. And to be able to start from somewhere, from a seed house and then create multiplier seed producers and restart our research. And to be able to return to the market with Romanian varieties.

At the moment, foreign companies do not sell varieties, but hybrids. Hybrid seed cannot be multiplied. You cannot take seeds from tomatoes and grow the next year.

In this way, by marketing hybrids, not varieties, companies have created addiction. And they sell their hybrid seeds for a lot of money in Romania.

Hybrids are superior to traditional varieties in terms of productivity, preservation, resistance to diseases and pests… And then the Romanian producer is forced to buy these hybrids. The sad thing is that every year a lot of money leaves Romania for these hybrids.

But he has nothing to do (the producer – editor’s note), because the Romanian offer for this production sector is very small.

It’s not easy, there were many obstacles and there still are, but I think it’s worth fighting and saving the Romanian varieties. And with research, let’s bring them back to market.