> Environmental and Health Concerns > Biodiversity

Tomatoes are the defining summertime crop for home and market gardeners alike. Every winter we stare at seed catalogues as if they are crystal balls, trying to divine which variety will ripen earliest, taste best and make us happiest. It’s a difficult but important choice, for what other garden-ripened fruit or vegetable is awaited with such anticipation by so many?

In all, there may be as many as 8,000 varieties of tomatoes to choose from. Probably only 4,000 of them have been studied and certainly only half of those have been tested under Canadian conditions. Most studies to date have focused on suitability to large-scale cultivation, mechanical harvesting and processing requirements. There has been relatively little formal evaluation of tomato varieties in an organic, small-scale (home or market garden) situation.

Seeds of Diversity has begun such a project in cooperation with the federal seed gene bank. Our members are able to grow samples of little-known tomato breeds and evaluate them while helping to replenish the seed bank.

Plant Gene Resources of Canada (PGRC), a department of Agriculture Canada based in Saskatoon, holds a collection of over 2,000 varieties of tomato seeds. These include heritage varieties collected from all parts of the world, breeding lines from Canadian experiment stations and universities as well as those developed by Canadian seed companies during the past 50 years. They were mostly deposited in PGRC’s seed bank between 1950 and 1980 and are in need of regeneration. Also, many of the varieties are undocumented and untested in Canada.

Participating Seeds of Diversity members receive seed samples in the spring, grow the tomatoes, save the seeds and return most of them to the seed bank for long-term storage. In addition, we record information about the tomatoes for PGRC’s central database. The varieties are all in the public domain, not patented, so any member may keep some seeds for personal or commercial use. As well, the information that we collect is made publicly available on the PGRC’s website at pgrc3.agr.gc.ca.

What is my vote for next year’s best tomato variety? Without a doubt, the new star of my garden is Stupice, an heirloom from Czechoslovakia newly brought to Canada. Early, abundant and tasty, with red round fruit about the size of tennis balls, this variety is destined to become a standard in Canadian gardens.

Undoubtedly, there are other discoveries to be made from the vast, unexplored gene pool of tomatoes. If you would like to become a tomato explorer and participate in our project, please contact Seeds of Diversity Canada, PO Box 36 Stn Q, Toronto, ON. M4T 2L7. Ph: 905-623-0353. E-mail: mail@seeds.ca. website: seeds.ca.

Bob Wildfong is the president of Seeds of Diversity Canada. Article reprinted and edited with permission from Eco-Farm and Garden, a magazine of Canadian Organic Growers.

Source: alive #231, January 2002