When biotechnology tried to improve the complex flavor of tomato, one approach that worked was to add a terpene-producing gene from lemon basil to enhance the flavor of tomatoes which commercially were produced with high water, high fruit to leaves ratios like you had.

Short of becoming a mad scientist yourself, you can do this naturally deliciously by slow simmering your tomato in lemon basil with olive oil. If you really want to give it a bang, Thai recipes can incorporate fresh pounded lemongrass which is a similar concept enhancing the flavor, with a little olive oil and terpene oil flavors similar to what your tomato might have lost.

The slower you cook it the better, because that will remove water and concentrate flavor, and the effect of the olive oil and low heat is to also extract lycopene and other related tomato terpenes which your taste buds will notice more once extracted more of a tomato taste...

As for the sugars your tomatoes couldn't produce, you could always try adding guarape (or better yet fermented guarape) but I'm sure that's not for everyone!
PC

Here is a link that might be useful: The biotech attempt

Interesting article, thanks for posting! Do not think I seen it before...

Does anyone know what the GM tomato was called? It must have a name by now as the article was written in 2007.

Just curious,

Linda

No commercial name that I know of, it's one of several under research lock and key.

The lemon basil gene used which expresses geraniol synthase is named the "GES gene" in the literature.

Transgenic tomato lines overexpressing geraniol synthase (GES), and there are many such lines under lock and key in research institutions, are called "transgenic GES tomato lines".

Similarly there is more of a gene-named alphabet soup in other targeted aroma GM tomato lines in the academic coffers such as "GPPS-SSU transgenic tomato lines" crossed with GES transgenic lines.

no fish genes made tomatoes taste better as far as I know, nor plants growing salmon sandwiches ;-)
PC

This post was edited by PupillaCharites on Mon, Sep 8, 14 at 13:10