Gardening

not even the hybrids. Of course, I grow my tomatoes for flavor not shipping.

The loss of lycopene isn't good. In the U.S. we tend to get most of our lycopene from tomato products or cooked tomatoes.

Lycopene reduction isn't the only nutritional loss from tomato breeding. Some wild tomatoes contain another antioxidant, anthocyanin. It's virtually absent from our tomato varieties although present in the inedible parts of the plant. There's a new tomato in seed catalogs called "Indigo Rose" and it's an OP variety bred from a cross between a wild Chilean variety and a modern type.