Pinky, Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum)
Japan

The three Japanese varieties in the Culinary Breeding Network (CBN) Collection are the result of a Japanese seed exchange project. CBN Seed Ambassador Shawn Linehan attended two ‘Seed to Plate Tours’ to Japan. This trips were organized by Portland farmer and chef Stacey Givens of The Side Yard Farm & Kitchen to connect urban farmers in Portland with farmers in Japan. Each trip, Shawn took seed from the Pacific Northwest to trade with Japanese farmers and visited a huge seed shop with unique varieties of Japanese vegetables.  The goal was to find and bring back seed of interesting varieties that taste great so regional seed companies, like Adaptive Seeds and Uprising Seeds, could start to produce the seed here in the PNW.

The ‘Pinky’ seed was gifted to Shawn from a farmer in Japan who had been saving the seed for about a decade. Shawn passed the seed to Uprising Seeds who found the fruits to be a fabulous tasting mid-sized cherry tomato: pinkish-red, firm and fleshy with a very sweet and rich summertime flavor. Additionally, they were very excited to find Pinky has some of the biggest trusses they have ever seen – they counted 60 ripe tomatoes on a single branched truss - that are very resistant to splitting and perfect for allowing to fully ripen nearly to the tip for clipping whole trusses. Seed from Uprising Seeds.