Goodbye TRADITOM, hello tasty tomatoes

After 42 months of investigating the huge variability of traditional European tomatoes, the TRADITOM activities have come to an end in August 2018.

The project has come a long way since it’s kick-off in March 2015: TRADITOM has resulted in the most comprehensive exploration of traditional European tomato varieties so far. This exploration was possible thanks to joining forces between scientists, breeders and traditional farmers in the main cultivation areas in the EU Mediterranean countries. The collected information has been centralized in the TRADITOM repository.

This represents an unprecedented level of information of tomato resources with important implications not only for scientific classification, origin and diversification of the local varieties but also to help defining what makes a local variety special or different from another and what varieties could be of interest to grow or use further.

TRADITOM results will contribute to increasing the competitiveness of traditional tomato growers in a market that is progressively replacing the rich heritage of traditional tomatoes and growing practices by a reduced set of modern hybrids cultivated in high technology facilities. Therefore, TRADITOM provides farmers and other stakeholders in the tomato and food fields with a scientifically sound information platform and new materials with increased resilience - thus giving a new push to traditional varieties with impact on consumers.