Kumato®
Perhaps I should call these Kumato raisin tomatoes! This is a picture about a week after harvest. Do you notice how the skin is shrivelling up on some of them?
Here’s what the inside looks like of one of the healthier looking ones above. This is three-quarters of a tomato, after a fourth of it was sacrificed for a taste test. Notice how the skin tore a bit instead of cutting, because it was so tough? All I can say is wow, YUCK! A sort of stick to the roof of your mouth, pasty taste. What a lingering after-taste! Nothing I would wish on anyone else.
Okay, by now you are all probably wondering what I am getting on about here.
The Kumato® is a variety patented by Syngenta. According to their website, this variety is created entirely with traditional breeding methods. As they explain on their website, they never sell anything but the final product to consumers, and only grown by specially licensed farmers and sold through specially licensed sales outlets (in other words, only very large supermarket chains). If you don’t buy it from an authorised vendor, it’s not a real Kumato!
So if the seeds are so controlled, how did I get the seeds to grow this in my garden? The answer is that it seems to be an open pollinated variety, and when you save seeds from the tomatoes and regrow them, they appear to grow true to type. I got these seeds from Laura of Mas du Diable, and I think she told me her father was the original saver of the seeds and gave them to her.
Syngenta does not actually sell this tomato in the Netherlands, so I couldn’t save them myself.
So what’s up with these tomatoes?
Well seed companies lose money when people save and replant their own seeds, and this is often dealt with by means of F1 hybrid varieties, which don’t grow true to type when grown from saved seeds. It appears in this case Syngenta has breed their tomatoes to be so totally dependent on chemicals, that anyone who does not know their secret formula of agricultural poisons cannot exactly reproduce the tomato sold in stores.
When I grew it, it was very weak and attracted every disease I normally get in my tomatoes. I grew it in a container, and noticed the roots did something strange to the dirt to make the water flow through quicker and not be well retained. The plants were not very productive for me either.
Why was it created?
Well first, here in Europe we have seed laws that restrict the varieties allowed to be sold. Many people in Europe have never seen a tomato that isn’t red! This is a ‘black’ tomato (also called purple), and it’s a real oddity. In addition, there’s probably some marketing advantage for Syngenta to be able to say it’s an open pollinated variety, and especially many gardeners are shunning F1 varieties by now in Europe.
Personally, I’m going back to growing heirloom tomatoes!
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14 Responses to “Kumato®”
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Nice little experiment Patrick – once again highlighting the importance of not letting companies like these take over the food chain.
James
I have seen these at the market. They come in plastic boxes and look nice under the store lights. I didn’t buy them because I was growing an heirloom with the same color (and they are obviously hybrid to say the least). Thanks for reviewing this.
Too bad they didn’t live up to the hype. You may have waited a little too long to harvest those. From what I understand, Kumatos are at their peak flavor when dark brown, before they turn red, as in your picture. After that, they have a mild flavor.
I was surprised today to see some of those at a local grocery store. I bought a box of acutual Kumatos, imported to michigan from Canada. They were not the western hemisphere’s “rosso bruno’s”, but kumatos in the trademark package. I shall be conducting my own similar experiment this spring with those seeds I save…
Perhaps the tough skin is an advantage for long shipping.
This is a radical statement: “the roots did something strange to the dirt to make the water flow through quicker and not be well retained.” What would that be? Physical, chemical process?
Did you use same containers and soil with other tomato plants?
hi
i tried this last year ..all my kumato seedlings died ..very thrifty and disease prone ..and i’m sure effected the other tomotos somehow .I thought i’d get one plant that would bear fruit …..think i’ll stick with what i know
MG: Let me know how it goes!
EJ: I didn’t mean it to be too radical… The roots did something to the soil to make it very loose, probably physical. It’s possible I’ve had another tomato do the same thing before, I don’t recall. Most tomatoes get root bound eventually, causing the soil not to hold water, but this is different and earlier, as it actually caused the soil to get a little looser. More irritating than anything else…
Yes, I grew this on the same way I grow other tomatoes. About 30 liters of ordinary commercial potting soil with nothing else added and no fertilizer. Normally I would use a mixture of peat moss and home made compost, but I was in a hurry this year and didn’t have home made compost available.
It’s a normal tomato plant, just bred in a strange way, and in my opinion not very useful to home gardeners.
Sweetpea: Thanks for sharing your experiences!
Hiya
That’s some pretty hefty conclusions you’ve made there Patrick – how many plants did you grow in your trial this year?
I grew only two plants this year and would hate to make big conclusions myself from just this one season and only two plants. I grew them from the SAME seed I sent you, which I harvested from a market bought tomato labelled kumato (not boxed or proprietry packaged). They look very similar to other smallish round brown/black skinned tomatoes I have seen in markets here in France and in Spain. In my experience they have had a good rich, sharp taste. Mine have a brown skin yours seem to be almost standard red. Were they brown at any point? While the plants have not been prolific and look as though they are about to succumb to blight non of my tomatoes have done well this year – a problem with the weather we had earlier and the later drying winds that wiped out all the blossoms for 2 months on most of the 20 or so varieties I’ve got this year, so not a good year to make a judgement for me. Lots of references to Kumato online suggest they are quite unique but I have not found anything unique about them yet. I plan to grow them again next year along side one I found in Barcelona which looks very similar, as I want a smallish brown skinned slicing tomato to grow regularly. If I went by this years performance alone i would not be impressed but I still hold some hope, as the original tomato I took the seeds from tasted magnificent. My dad grew them from the same seed and got a good harvest in Scotland last year.
Hi Laura,
The tomatoes were a little browner when I harvested them.
It’s true I did only grow one Kumato, but I grew about 20 other tomatoes, that for the most part all grew into the plants I was expecting them too. It’s of course not out of the question the plant I grew was somehow mutant or not right, but if these Kumato seeds are OP, I should be able to grow a mostly predictable plant.
This was truly a strange plant, with strange tomatoes. The taste was horrid! I needed quite a lot of beer to wash that away. I have also never seen a tomato shrivel up like a raisin before.
I really do stand by my conclusions here. At the same time, I’m very interested to hear from others who have similar or different experiences from me growing it. I did some searching, and I didn’t really find anyone else with a blog who had grown the tomato successfully before.
Rather Japanese sounding name?
Hi!
I came across this thread when doing my own research on Kumatos and after conducting my own experiment, I thought I’d post a reply to tell you my results.
I saved a bunch of seeds from Kumatos (labelled with the patent by Syngenta) that I bought in a local market. I live in the northeast of the US.
I planted all of them in tiny cups at first, since I had my suspicions that they might not sprout at all.
Well, most of them sprouted! I planted them in March and transplanted them into the garden in May. THEY THRIVED! I’ve been joking all summer that I have an alien invasion in my back yard because the tomatoes have taken over.
They grew so strongly and quickly once it got good and hot out that I couldn’t keep up with staking and all. A number of them eventually toppled over (before I could buy more stakes) from the weight of the fruit.
They’ve produced dozens and dozens of greenish-brown tomatoes and they’re delicious! They’re actually still going, too. Unfortunately, I am a novice tomato grower, and didn’t know what the signs of late blight were soon enough. They’ve had a good run, and they’re still flowering and producing fruit, but I am battling this annoying fungus now.
It’s not just the Kumatos either, it’s all 6 varieties I’m growing that have been affected. The Kumatos have it the worst because I didn’t really give them a lot of space to grow, and the blight appeared after a few fell over and had to be righted again.
Oh well. It’s been an interesting and delicious run! I plan to do it again next year after learning from my mistakes.
Hi Megan,
Thanks for letting us know your experiences!
Sorry about the blight. You shouldn’t blame yourself for anything, because there’s not much you can do about it. It’s a big problem in lots of places these days.
I think you let your Kumato ripen too much. Mine did brilliantly and were delicious. In fact, both the plants and the fruits themselves were outstanding in my garden. I simply took some seeds from a store-bought Kumato, rubbed the gel off with a paper towel and put them in a container. The plants actually overtook the tomatoes I had in the ground over 6 weeks prior.
Hi Scott, thanks for the comment!
I don’t normally buy supermarket tomatoes unless they are grown in my area which means underglass and not until early spring. By that time, I can usually wait until my own are ready. Notwithstanding, I had an overwhelming tomato craving and decided to gamble on Kumato-branded tomatoes. They were sweet, juicy and flavourful. I was impressed. Impressed enough to want to grow them myself. So I googled and found the Sygenta link plus indications that people were growing them from seed. It would seem that they are not F1 hybrids or people are lucky in their grow out results. If they aren’t F1, why patent? Your speculation about needing Sygenta’s chemicals in order to reproduce a store-bought Kumato is interesting. That certainly would justify the patent. It’s interesting also that one of its traits is that it is salt resistant. Maybe that’s necessary if there is a salt build-up as a result of the chemicals.
Regardless, I’ll try them next year and see how they turn out.
Regards,
Mike