A better, sweeter, cheaper tomato is being developed at UF

GAINESVILLE, Fla. - The University of Florida may bleed orange and blue, but in his area on the Gainesville campus, Professor Harry Klee sees red.

Improving tomatoes for consumers - partially by making them sweeter - has been his focus.

"What we're really trying to do is, it may sound silly, but we're trying to take a step back, 100 years, to where the tomato that was grown in Florida in the early 1900s had really good flavor," Professor Klee explained. "When we want to know if a tomato tastes good or not, we're harvesting that tomato from our field, bringing it back, and we have a consumer panel in the food science department that's 100 people."

It's a daunting task, but Klee says his tomatoes are the result of natural breeding and not genetic modification.

"As they flower, we collect pollen from one plant, transfer it to another plant, make and crosses and develop the next generation," he explained.

The goal is not only quality, but affordability.

"Right now if you've got enough money and you go to the right stores you can get a decent tomato. But that's not what we're about. We're about democracy. We want to get it to the people who really can't afford to spend a lot of money on it," Klee said. 

He and his team are closer than ever to unlocking the secret of sweeter tomatoes. By his estimate, they're 90% of the way there.

But until consumers can get a great tomato at a lower price, he says his work won't be done.

"We're not going to consider ourselves successful until you can go in and see that big bin in Publix for a dollar a pound, and the mother is going to pick that up and say, 'OK, I know my kids are really going to like that.' That's when we'll know we've succeeded," Klee said.