Chefs, breeders aim for taste

Aim is to produce better veggies

A visitor to the University of Wisconsin research farm samples tomatoes Wednesday in Verona, Wis. University plant breeders are working with chefs and farmers to develop better-tasting vegetables.

VERONA, Wis. — There’s a good chance that many of the suddenly trendy vegetables that foodies latch on to in the next decade will benefit from research at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

While plant breeders at many public universities focus on improving field corn, soybeans, and other crops used in food manufacturing or livestock feed, those in Madison want to produce better-tasting vegetables.

The university has had ties for years to the vegetable processing industry, as Wisconsin is among the top two or three states in producing canned or frozen sweet corn, green beans, and peas.

But vegetable breeders say the local food movement has created new opportunities with a boom in organic farms, farmers markets, and farm-to-table restaurants.

The challenge is coming up with varieties that consumers like, even if they can’t always articulate what makes one ear of corn better than another.

“Apples are almost the only fruit or vegetable that when you go to the grocery store, you see 30 different apples all by name,” said Bill Tracy, a sweet corn breeder who chairs the university’s Department of Agronomy. “We could do the same thing for corn, and I’m not saying we need 30, but we could have a corn that’s perfect for roasting, or soup use.”

Horticulture professor Julie Dawson is leading a project in which vegetable breeders work with local farmers and chefs to figure out what makes vegetables taste great and then produce easy-to-grow varieties with outstanding flavor.

Participating chefs receive weekly deliveries of produce that they evaluate on a 5-point scale for qualities such as sweetness and texture.

Dan Bonanno, the chef at A Pig in a Fur Coat, estimated he’s tasted 80 varieties of tomatoes — “I never knew there were so many different tomatoes” — since mid-July. For him, the big find has been a sweet corn bred to have a less sugary taste and firmer texture than most popular varieties.

“I ripped open the husk, took a bite, and it was like eating a pear,” he said. “It was so juicy ... I’m like, wow, you can make a very nice sauce or gelato with it because it’s already naturally sweet and buttery and it had so much water.”

Very sweet corn, which most Americans have become accustomed to, gets mushy when stirred into a dish like risotto, Mr. Tracy said, and the sugary taste may conflict with other ingredients.

“If we understand what chefs want, we can produce it,” he said.

Mr. Tracy is confident chefs will be able to sell those new varieties to the public, given how they have popularized ramps, broccolini, and other once-obscure fruits and vegetables.