Researchers Spent 13 Years Perfecting This Tomato—and It Could Be Your New Favorite

Tomato season may be winding down right now, but there's a new variety on the horizon that may be sprouting up in gardens and grocery stores next season: the Scarlet Sunrise.

The sweet bi-color grape tomato was developed by researchers at Rutgers University in New Jersey. Using traditional plant breeding methods, scientists created a crack-resistant tomato with a golden hue and a reddish blush—like a sunrise sky.

According to the researchers, the Scarlet Sunrise has an intense, sweet flavor with moderate acidity. The high-yielding plant is ready for harvesting in around 70 days.

Researchers Thomas Orton and Peter Nitzsche started working on the new plant in 2012 with hopes of combining two tomato varieties—a firm commercial red grape tomato and an Isis Candy heirloom cherry tomato that is prone to splitting open as it grows.

“We saw potential in both," Nitzsche, an associate professor and agricultural agent for Rutgers Cooperative Extension, said in a statement. “So, we crossed them, hoping to combine the firmness of the grape with the flavor and color of the bi-color."

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To develop the hybrid plant, Orton used tiny tweezers to extract parts from some plants to stop them from self-pollinating and tiny paintbrushes to dab pollen from other plants onto them. “It’s hard to crossbreed grape tomatoes because their flowers are tiny and fragile,” he said.

After over a decade of tedious work, the researchers' experimentation paid off, with a tomato that's ideal for snacking. “We’ve always tried to focus on flavor as the competitive advantage for New Jersey growers,” Nitzsche said. “It doesn’t have to be perfect-looking. It just has to taste great.”

The new tomato made its debut at the Open House and Tomato Tasting event in August at the university’s Clifford E. and Melda C. Snyder Research and Extension Farm. The event offered the public a chance to sample Scarlet Sunrise, alongside dozens of other varieties, including heirlooms, hybrids, and experimental breeds.

The current plants grow to be 6 to 8 feet tall, which can be unwieldy for farmers and gardeners, so the researchers are working on producing more compact plants that are more manageable.

The tomato seeds are not available for sale at the moment. The university is currently seeking partnerships with commercial growers so that the tomato can reach a wider audience. Scarlet Sunrise seeds will hopefully be available next spring, the researchers say.