#Tomato Trending

Produce Grower: What are some of the biggest trends that you see when it comes to greenhouse-grown tomatoes?

Nadia Sabeh: There’s a lot more interest in growing heirlooms because consumers are becoming more comfortable with non-uniform, nontraditional sizes, shapes and sizes for all of their produce … I think a lot of people are seeking new experiences.

I’m hearing people talk more about varietals, how to grow them with their unique conditions in post-harvest. A lot of them are more fragile than the traditional beefsteak tomato that was developed for thick skin. [Heirloom tomatoes] aren’t bred to sustain the long ride from California to New York necessarily, and live on the shelf for a long time.

I’m seeing more heirloom tomatoes even at the grocery store; I’m seeing them more in restaurants. I’m actually seeing articles telling growers, “These are some heirloom varieties. This is how you grow them. This one is going to be sweeter and this one is going to be fleshy.” … so I’m seeing it from both ends of the market. And I don’t know which is coming first: if consumers are demanding the variety, or if there are those few renegade growers out there who are putting out those heirloom tomatoes [at] farmer’s markets and CSAs.

PG: What is your perspective on the new tomato grower? What can we as an industry do to help them survive and thrive?

NS: In terms of growing systems, if we had more standardized growing systems then it might be easy entry for farmers into this industry, into farming. If you had an option A, B and C, and we made it clear like Standard A Growing System is good for lettuce and leafy greens and Standard B Growing System is good for tomatoes and cucumbers, etc., that at least gives them a head start, where they’re not starting from zero, and they can even build upon it … I feel like standardization would help grow the industry, but also could bring down cost, in terms of manufacturing.

PG: There’s been a lot of talk throughout the industry about LEDs and tomatoes. What are your thoughts?

NS: I think a lot of growers new and old are a little bit tepid. I think that they’re a little nervous about LEDs because it is a new technology, it only produces wavelengths of light in red and blue or another specific wavelength, it’s not super intense, it’s not super bright and when we’re outside, we think of sunlight, and we want the brightest, most intense, broadest spectrum light that we can get.

But the science has shown for decades that plants respond, really, to red and blue light. And maybe a little bit of ultraviolet is good, and some infrared is good, and some people even say green light is good because that green light can actually pass through the top leaves and penetrate down into the lower leaf levels.

By providing specific wavelengths at low intensities, we can save a ton of energy. We can reduce our light energy costs by more than 50 percent and now we don’t have so much heat generated off of those lights…you won’t need as much cooling energy.

We can make LEDs more viable for growing tomatoes. Because there are so many benefits to it. If the plants aren’t using 70 percent of the light that we’re providing them, why are we providing it?