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Majid Foolad Valentine tomato

Coming to a garden near you: An award-winning, Penn State-bred tomato variety

3/15/18

Valentine's Day may have passed for this year, but if you're in love with sweet, firm, antioxidant-rich — and award-winning — tomatoes that will perform well in your garden this season, you're in luck, thanks to a researcher in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences. "Valentine," a new variety of grape tomato that germinated in the breeding program of plant scientist Majid Foolad, now is available commercially after nearly two decades in development.

Rain grant awardee

Researchers win funding for new tomatoes, wood packaging pest treatment

8/22/17

Penn State research teams working on two promising discoveries -- a new, energy-efficient treatment to kill destructive insects in wood and new tomato varieties bred for Pennsylvania conditions -- each have won $75,000 Research Applications for Innovation, or RAIN, grants to bring their discoveries to market.

tomato variety

Time to choose your tomato varieties for 2014

3/12/14

It may seem early, but now is the time to pick the tomato varieties you want to grow in your garden this summer, according to an expert in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.

John Hoenig, Tomato Research

Historian studies quest for the 12-month tomato

6/3/13

Is there an item on the average household's dinner table so roundly scorned as the wintertime tomato? The plastic-like red globe is typically so barren of authentic taste and texture that it epitomizes the industrialization of food, says John Hoenig, a doctoral candidate in history at Penn State. Yet he points to that very same tomato as a symbol of victory — tangible evidence of Americans' success in transcending traditional patterns of seasonality in their diets.

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Time to choose your tomato varieties for 2012

1/20/12

It may seem early, but now is the time to pick the tomato varieties you want to grow in your garden this summer, according to an expert in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences.

Prevent tomato late blight next growing season

10/21/09

Across the northeast, home gardeners expecting the usual bumper crop of tomatoes this season were dismayed to find their plants affected by late blight, the same fungus that caused Ireland's potato famine in the 19th century. According to Beth Gugino, assistant professor of plant pathology at Penn State, late blight is a fungus that primarily affects tomatoes, potatoes and certain solanaceous weeds such as bittersweet nightshade.

Safe farming practices offer hope for stopping tainted-food crises

7/2/08

As the recent salmonella outbreak linked to raw tomatoes fades from the nation's headlines, supermarket produce managers are still grasping for ways to ensure that the fresh fruits and vegetables they sell are safe. But a food-safety specialist in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences says farmers have a role to play in reducing the risk of contamination.

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Backyard gardens need good food-safety practices, too

6/20/08

The recent tomato contamination outbreak has many people thinking about growing their own garden-fresh fruits and vegetables. But a food-safety specialist in Penn State's College of Agricultural Sciences says it's not where the produce is grown, but how it's grown, so amateur cultivators should know a few important tips about home-garden food safety.

A Better Tomato

5/1/02

"In a sense," says Italian nutrition researcher Francesco Branca, "the future is to find a good combination of tradition and technology." Penn State's Majid Foolad has done just that, and come up with a nutritionally potent strain of cherry tomato.