The Plant Introduction Service of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) alone has a list of 10,000 different types of tomatoes obtained in the past by farmers around the world. But unfortunately, most of it, possibly more than 80%, is no longer in the seed banks and few varieties of this tasty fruit reach the consumer. The reason for this brutal decline is to be found in the standardization of crops promoted mostly by biotech multinationals. Thus, the hybrid tomatoes that are used today for intensive production keep an enormous degree of genetic uniformity.
However, some producers, such as the members of the Valencian cooperative Ceaga, in Castielfabib, cultivate and pamper all possible varieties, so that they spread the example among other farmers.
