Store-bought tomatoes taste horrifically disgusting — err, bland. Now scientists have discovered a version of a gene that helps give tomatoes their flavor is actually missing in about 93 percent of modern, domesticated varieties. The discovery may help bring flavor back to tomatoes you can pick up in the produce section.
"How many times do you hear someone say that tomatoes from the store just don't quite measure up to heirloom varieties?" Clifford Weil, program director of the National Science Foundation’s Plant Genome Research Program that supported the work, asked in a press announcement. "This study gets to why that might be the case and shows that better tasting tomatoes appear to be on their way back."
