New Tomato Variety Shows Promise In First Year Trials

ST. CLOUD (WJON News) -- We have an update on plans to create a new tomato variety called the "Husky Tomato". This is the first year of a field trial in the St. Cloud State University Community Garden.

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Biology professor Angela McDonnell says the fruit they are collecting are looking good.

The plants are about five to six feet tall each. They are covered in hundreds of fruits. We've been harvesting fruits roughly the size of ping-pong balls to golf balls on average, though some are a little larger. Two of the six seed lots look really great. So two of the six plants we really like the fruit we're getting off of them.

What they like about the fruits from the two plants is that they are consistently producing tomatoes that are half red and half black. This fall, students are collecting the fruits they like and recording the data about them along with their seeds.

We're only saving the seeds from the fruits that we like the best and that we think what a Husky Tomato should look like. Those seeds, when we save them, we'll grow them and plant them in the greenhouse, and then we'll do some self-pollination in order to stabilize that appearance and make sure the next generation of tomatoes look similar.

Tomatoes from the plants they don't like are harvested and given away.

McDonnell says she's encouraged by the first year of field trials, and she believes they are either right on track or maybe even a little ahead of schedule.

She describes their taste as being a little on the sweet side.

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