The San Marzano Difference
(Science Behind the Tomato)
Round tomatoes have between five and seven locules or seed pockets;
plum tomatoes like the san marzano have two. How did that happen?
"The plum shape might have arisen as a mutation," says tomato
geneticist Charles Rick of UC Berkeley. "Only one or two genes
differentiate it from the round tomato. It apparently wasn't in any
of the original varieties brought into the Mediterranean, but the
fact that it is pretty widely spread through the Mayan area [of
Mexico and Central America] suggests that it is a very old type of
variant."
Photograph By: Copyright © Sheila McKinnon
In a 1789 treatise on exotic plants that had been introduced into
Rome, two Italian abbots described a "pear-shaped tomato which is
of a more delicate and less acid taste"-possibly a forerunner of
the san marzano. This tomato may have resulted from a spontaneous
hybridization of two other varieties, fiaschella and fiascone, but
was distinct from them-and from the roma (which is the plum tomato
best known in the United States).
Photograph By: Copyright © Sheila McKinnon
The san marzano is indeterminate in nature (it bears fruit over an
extended period), with fruits grouped in bunches of five or six. It
is cylindrical, with two longitudinal depressions, and has a small
seed cavity that can be scooped out, leaving all the meat.
Resistant to cracking and easily peeled, it ripens in 60 to 70 days
in San Marzano's volcanic soil (and takes about eighty days to
ripen in the U.S.). More details were offered in 1920 by Ferruccio
Zago, in his Notions of Horticulture: "The peeled tomato industry
is a source of pride in the Agro Nocerino area. People use a
variety known as san marzano.The plant can bear up to 12 bunches of
fruit, the skin has a bright red color and is easily removable, an
indispensable characteristic for preparing peeled tomatoes.... The
pulp is dense and not much sacchariferous." In other words ... it
has less sugar!
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