Brad Gates of Wild Boar Farms on breeding tomatoes.

“I was looking for the holy grail that would have my customers come crawling back on their hands and knees.”

With a reputation for unusual and wildly popular tomato varieties, tomato breeder Brad Gates focuses above all else on flavour.

He didn’t start out working in tomato breeding. While working in the landscape industry, he was asked by a friend to help sell heirloom tomatoes at a farmers market. Gates loved the energy at the market—and he was fascinated with the unusual heirloom tomatoes.

So he started growing, and, eventually, breeding tomatoes.

Tomato Breeding

Gates says that flavour is always his top goal. Other important traits include:

pest and disease resistance
yield
shelf life

Tomato Flavour

Gates says, “Tomatoes have the potential of so many flavour aspects.” These include:

umami
richness
tartness
sweetness

He says that in general, he finds store-bought tomatoes are “one-dimensional.”

Looking Ahead

Heat and cool tolerance are traits that he has found in some of his varieties. For example,

Pink Berkeley Tie-Dye does well in cooler climates such as San Francisco, which is cool and foggy.
Lucid Gem has proven to be very tolerant of hot weather. In heat waves, when other varieties do poorly, Lucid Gem stands up well.

Gates says that he is currently working on small, two-foot-high tomato varieties that produce gourmet tomatoes.

Why small? Gates says, “Why grow one or two varieties when you can grow 10 or 15?”