Why the interest?
Several posters here have noted that they've grown the Kumato from seeds obtain from store bought tomatoes and been very pleased with it.

Personally I have tasted the store bought Kumato and thought it bland and mealy (as most store bought tomatoes are). However it is likely that store bought Kumato are artificially ripened which provides a tomato that looks like a vine grown Kumato, but tastes like cardboard.

Many here (including myself) love the taste and the appearance of black tomatoes, but blacks tend to be temperamental in terms of taste and production from season to season. If Syngenta has genetically modified the Kumato to enhance disease resistance/increased production it should produce a plant that has good production and flavor stability from season to season.

Why is there interest in this tomato?
1. It supposedly can be grown from seed and produce true fruits in following generations
2. It is a hybrid of unknown origin (one parent possibly from the Galapagos Islands) and may have a certain amount of genetic resistance to certain diseases built into it's genetic makeup
3. Posters have indicated that they have been able to grow from seed and obtain very robust plants that are productive
4. Posters have indicated that the flavor is rich and sweet

Kumato Background:
The Kumato tomato is a "black" tomato patented and sold by Syngenta. Syngenta has indicated that the Kumato is a hybrid so by definition, anyone trying to grow the Kumato from seeds obtained from store bought tomatoes should not be able to grow the fruit true. It appears that either:

1. The Kumato is not a hybrid and this is a smoke screen by Syngenta to deter buyers from trying to grow seeds from store bought tomatoes
2. The Kumato is a hybrid but has been genetically stabilized so that growing from seed obtained from store bought tomatoes results in fruit that is true

There is an excellent thread by "The Tomato Addict" regarding the Kumato (linked below).

From that thread the following information was obtained:

1. The Kumato may be a hybrid, but it is also probably stabilized over multiple generations which is why growers are able to grow it true from seed
2. Growers have reported Kumato grows true from seed up to at least three generations from store bought seed propagation
3. The Kumato is edible in all three stages of it's growth (not sure exactly what this means)
4. Syngenta markets the Kumato as "Galapagos Island" (GI) derived tomato. Commentators have indicated that there are no black tomatoes on the GI however it may be that one of the original parents strains used during the initial hybridization studies originated from the GI which is why Syngenta lauds it as a GI tomato.
5. Others have reported the Kumato is 2nd only to CP in their mind when ranking Black tomatoes (which is high praise indeed)

Information requested:
If you've grown the Kumato it would be appreciated if you provide the following information:

Seed info:
1. Where you obtained your seeds
2. If you obtained your seeds from the tomato, how did you harvest the seeds and store them

Plant info:
1. Leaf type
2. Plant size
3. Any disease noted when growing
4. Tolerance to heat, humidity and drought

Fruit info:
1. Production of plant (low/medium/high)
2. General shape and weight of fruit
3. Flavor profile
4. Ripening time in your zone

Stability info:
1. How many times have you grown the tomato and what variances did you note from season to season
2. Have you personally grown, seed harvested and re-grown from harvested seed (necessary for growers wishing to exchange seeds with others)

Thanks,

smithmal

That's for others here since yes, I've tasted it, as Kumato, and like many others would never grow it, although there are others who do like it, that I know.

By putting in your title THE kumato thread do you mean to synthesize the many hundreds of threads and thousands of posts about it since it was introduced?

Good luck if that's the intention. ( Smile)

Carolyn

I've sent Terry an email inquiring about how his/her Kumato trails went and never received a response. Also, I never saw it discussed again on his/her blog. Reviews of growing the Kumato pretty much run the gambit, so I thought having a centralized thread on this would be noteworthy.

smithmal

Right now I owe her some seeds she wanted from me.

And when she returned from France this past spring I was the recipient of some wonderful French chocolates and more.

She is very busy this time of year doing her growouts and processing seeds for what she sells off of her website.

Carolyn, who still doesn't like Kumato.LOL

If anyone has any information on general ripening time after transplant, that information would be helpful.

Due to it's size, and that's it's crossed with a black variety, I'm thinking it's somewhere between 70 - 85 days (from my experience with blacks of similar size like Nyagous, Paul Robeson and Noire de Crimee), but anything is possible.

In any event, I'm looking forward to the experiment and will post back as to it's germination time and seedling growth characteristics in March of '15.

smithmal

To answer the question: Why people would want to grow a tomato from F1 hybrid, that does not have such a good taste : I think of 2 reasons:

1- Chances are that it might be tastier when grown in the garden.

2- Just an adventure to discover the misinformation about hybrids. There are a multitude of so-called hybrids that grow true from F2, F3, ..Fn seeds. I am going to grow a "mini Roma" from store bought. Even for greenhouse tomato, it tastes great , to me !

Seysonn

The plants were easy to grow, and were quite lanky and sprawly but took a longer time to set tomatoes than other plants producing tomatoes of the same size. I sort of forgot about them and ignored them because they were so slow to ripen. The appearance and taste were very similar to the store bought. I had hoped to grow them for their keeping qualities to have a stored supply of greenies to ripen in the house that would be at least equal to store bought, but most were too ripe when I did my last pre-frost picking so I did not save enough to get a decent sample of their keeping qualities under indoor ripening conditions. They were just ok for eating, but I probably won't use garden space on them again, because I ended up with many much better tasting thin skinned varieties to ripen indoors.

Thanks for the info. Sounds like Kumato was a dud for you. I'm somewhat shocked that there was no difference in taste between the store bought Kumato's vs. the OTV that you produced.

I'm wondering, since you're zone 3, if that played a part in the Kumato's taste/ripening speed. According to the linked map below, you get anywhere from 2 weeks to 6 weeks of temps above 86F.

I'm wondering if flavor suffered due to this. In any event, I'll give it a shot growing in my zone (6b) and report back.

smithmal