What is the input of tayto crisps?

Answer 1

BEFORE a new tomato hybrid is tossed in the reject bin at W. Atlee Burpee, the gardening company, it has a final appeal with the company's chief executive, George Ball Jr. "Usually my research and development people are right," said Mr. Ball, a third-generation seed salesman. "But they're not right 10 times out of 10."

Fresh Salsa tomatoes do not look, cut or dice like other varieties.

At first glance, Burpee's specialists seemed correct to dismiss a seed that yielded oddly shaped tomatoes - cylindrical in the middle, but tapered at the ends - since gardeners typically prefer more uniform ovoids or spheres. But when Mr. Ball examined the fruit in spring 2004, he noticed something peculiar about its texture. "When I sliced it on the chopping block, there was a resistance to the knife," he said. "Normally with a tomato, it'll give in right away - it's watery. This wasn't."

The tomato's pulp was, in fact, extraordinarily firm; the bulk of the fruit's water content was locked away in the outer flesh, producing a rubbery consistency. Such a dry tomato would make a poor ingredient for sauce.

But as Mr. Ball and the Burpee brain trust noted during their hands-on review, the tomato is ideal for cubing - the product can be cut into tiny pieces without becoming a watery mess. That chopability led the company to name the product the Fresh Salsa, aimed at customers who prefer to top their tortilla chips with a condiment that approximates the look and feel of newly picked tomatoes, rather than marinara.

Burpee, based in Warminster, Pa., was certainly aware of the nation's growing appetite for salsa before proceeding with the product's development. From 2001 through 2003, annual sales of Mexican sauces - a category that includes salsa, picante sauce and taco sauce - grew more than 5 percent, to $935 million, according to the research company Mintel Consumer Intelligence. To broaden the Fresh Salsa's appeal beyond devotees of Mexican cuisine, Burpee also decided to emphasize the tomato's suitability for bruschetta, another dish in which firm tomato cubes are desirable.

Once Mr. Ball gave the go-ahead, extensive testing on the Fresh Salsa plant commenced at locations nationwide, to ensure that the tomato could grow in various climates. Fertility tests were conducted to check whether the "mother" fruit - those from which the seeds are culled and sold - could produce in adequate numbers. (The Fresh Salsa mothers usually produce 100 to 500 seeds a tomato.) Researchers also monitored "seedling vigor," an industry term referring to how many germinated seeds turn into actual plants.

Mr. Ball said the original Fresh Salsa tomato was developed by California Hybrids, a company under contract with Burpee, but he would not divulge exactly where the mothers were being raised. "A good farming location is every bit like a mine," he said, noting that the best fruits and vegetables will grow in only a handful of "meteorological stable" places.

The Fresh Salsa seeds, which sell for $4.95 for a pack of 30, have been available from Burpee's mail-order catalog since January. The time from planting to harvest is about 75 days; Mr. Ball said that gardeners who sow the seeds by the end of May should be digging into homemade salsa around the start of the college football season.

Alas, pigskin fans who don't grow their own will have to settle for store-bought salsa, because Burpee has no plans to market the product to industrial customers. The Fresh Salsa tomato may be able to withstand a chef's knife, but it's still no match for the giant processing machines at a Tostitos or Old El Paso factory