Tomatoes

Ever since Florida farmers have been growing tomatoes, they’ve picked them by hand or hired laborers. It’s painstaking work that might be made easier soon with machine-harvestable tomatoes developed by University of Florida scientists. Now that the varieties are available, growers in Florida’s $400 million-a-year industry hope they can use mechanized harvesting, but doubts remain. Large-scale trials this spring – using the new varieties -- will tell growers and scientists a lot more. The new varieties were decades in the making, said Jessica Chitwood-Brown, the tomato breeder at the University of Florida Gulf Coast Research and Education Center (GCREC).

The Fair Food Program, the signature creation of Coalition of Immokalee Workers, is expanding internationally.

Farmworkers share stories of life in the Florida agricultural fields

Tomatoes have a long and unusual relationship with our culinary world. Once thought poisonous, they came to be staples in everything from salsa to pasta…

It's been a rough season for Florida’s tomato farmers. One of the wettest winters in decades gave way to growing season marked by disease and low yields.…

Conventional tomatoes are picked when they’re still green and hard. Afterwards these green tomatoes are ripened with ethylene gas- and the color changes…