A new type of tomato which tastes as sweet as a peach has gone on sale at supermarket giant Tesco .
The new Sugardrop variety has been developed for the retailer to cater for customers with a sweet tooth and anyone who finds the taste of standard tomatoes too sharp, particularly children.
Described by Tesco as the sweetest tomato ever, the Spanish-grown Sugardrops are a hybrid of two tomato varieties and contain roughly three times the amount of natural sugar of a standard strain.
The tomato also has around 50 per cent of a child’s recommended daily dose of vitamin C .
Tesco tomato buyer Ashleigh McWilliams said creating the Sugardrop involved two years of cross-breeding involving 3,000 varieties.
“A few years ago we sat down with our suppliers and asked them to find us a high quality tomato that would appeal to gourmets with a sweet tooth,” she said.
“It was the beginning of major research that involved our growers contacting all the major seed houses in the world in order to find varieties that they could cross pollinate to find a tomato with higher than normal sugar levels.”
“The result is the Sugardrop which is the sweetest tomato there has ever been and now this week UK shoppers will be the first to try it.”
Gerry Hayman, spokesman for the British Tomato Growers Association, said over the past few years there has been a growing consumer trend towards sweeter tomatoes .
