[ The prime growing area for Jersey tomatoes is a region now known
as the Inner Coastal Plain, which covers more than 1,000 square miles
in southern New Jersey, bordering the Delaware River to the west. ]
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PORTSIDE CULTURE

THE LEGACY OF CAMPBELL SOUP’S TOMATO BREEDING PROGRAM  
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Jeff Quattrone
January 12, 2022
Modern Farmer
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_ The prime growing area for Jersey tomatoes is a region now known as
the Inner Coastal Plain, which covers more than 1,000 square miles in
southern New Jersey, bordering the Delaware River to the west. _

Harry Hall, Campbell's chief agricultural expert, inspects tomatoes
in his office at Campbell's research farm in Cinnaminson, New Jersey
sometime in the 1920s. , Campbell Soup Company

 

What comes to mind when you think of Campbell Soup? You might picture
cans of tomato soup or perhaps an iconic Andy Warhol print of them.
You probably don’t think much about the ingredients that went into
those cans.

But Campbell’s did, and it bet big and early on agriculture research
to grow its product offerings. One of the company’s biggest
contributions to the agricultural space was its tomato breeding
program, launched in 1910 in Cinnaminson, New Jersey, which involved
conducting field experiments in an effort to breed different varieties
for taste, production and disease resistance. A tomato research
facility, added in 1937, was responsible for developing notable
varieties such as the J.T.D., the Garden State and Rutgers
tomato—and helped put New Jersey on the map as an important
tomato-growing state.

Headquartered in Camden, New Jersey, Campbell’s once sourced most of
its tomatoes from local farms. The Garden State has 24 different soil
types, and most of them are good for farming. The prime growing area
for Jersey tomatoes is a region now known as the Inner Coastal Plain,
which covers more than 1,000 square miles in southern New Jersey,
bordering the Delaware River to the west. The soil here consists of
loams and sandy loam and is ideal for truck farms and high production
of crops. Located within this prime growing area, Campbell’s was
positioned well enough to double down on its bet that agricultural
research would fuel its condensed soup products. 

Tomato production in New Jersey can be traced to 1812, when tomato
grower John Loper farmed on land owned by Ephraim Buck in Cumberland
County. Tomatoes at that time were still feared by some—a nickname
for the fruit was “poisonous apple.” There’s a story about how
Robert Johnson of Salem, New Jersey stood on the town’s courthouse
steps and publicly ate a tomato to prove that it was safe; however,
there’s no actual documentation it actually happened. (Don’t tell
the residents of Salem though, who, in 2021, revived an annual tomato
festival that at one time was named for Johnson and includes a
reenactment of the local legend eating a tomato.)

As the 1800s rolled on, and people overcame their fear of tomatoes,
the savory red fruit started to catch on as a commercial crop. The
canning industry was growing in New Jersey, with tomatoes making up a
part of the mix of crops canned. In the 1860s, the rapid
commercialization of tomato ketchup as a consumer product propelled
the farming of tomatoes, especially in South Jersey, a core ketchup
production area. The Campbell Soup Company was originally founded as
the Joseph A. Campbell Preserve Company in 1869. In the 1870s, the
company started to market its new Beefsteak Tomato Ketchup.

By 1910, when the company launched its tomato breeding program,
Campbell’s had undergone a name change and released its signature
ready-to-eat Beefsteak Tomato soup. The following year, the company
achieved national distribution, and it needed more tomatoes to meet
the demand.

One of the tomatoes Campbell’s bred was the Rutgers tomato, which
traces its lineage back to the man who invented the condensed soup
process, John Thompson Dorrance, when he was an employee of
Campbell’s. He would later go on to become president of the company.
The J.T.D. tomato, named after him, was released in 1918 and was
likely bred on the farm where Dorrance lived. The J.T.D. tomato is a
medium-sized red tomato averaging in the eight-to-12-ounce range.
It’s uniform in shape, tasty and doesn’t crack. Campbell’s was
looking to standardize its harvest with tomatoes that were a
consistent size and shape, as well as taste- and blemish-free, as its
production needs increased.

The J.T.D. tomato, while important to New Jersey, was even recognized
on the national level. In the 1937 USDA Yearbook of Agriculture, it
was described as “an interesting example of a local type developed
for adaptation to a specific set of conditions and needs. It was
developed by the Campbell Soup Co. for growing in New Jersey, mainly
for its own factory use. It has not become widely grown elsewhere.”
This work is a big contributor to the iconic status of the Jersey
tomato.

In 1928, the J.T.D. tomato was used in a breeding program for what has
become the most popular Jersey heirloom tomato, the Rutgers. To create
it, the J.T.D. was crossed with the Marglobe, a disease-resistant and
historic tomato developed by Frederick John Pritchard while at the
USDA’s Plant Industry Bureau. The Marglobe has a strong disease
resistance to Fusarium wilt and Nailhead rust, which plagued Florida
tomato growers. Once the Marglobe was introduced, it just about saved
the Florida tomato industry.

Once Campbell’s crossed the Rutgers tomato, the company handed it
off to professor Lyman Schermerhorn of the Rutgers New Jersey
Agricultural Experiment Station (NJAES). Schermerhorn did field trials
for the next six years, making selections of the best plants. The
Rutgers tomato was released in 1934, and it soon proved its worth as a
processing tomato and one of adaptability.

As Andrew Smith details in his book Souper Tomatoes, 72 percent of
commercial growers in the United States once planted the Rutgers
tomato. That’s a significant share of the market. It was used by
Hunt’s and Heinz, as well as the Jersey-based PJ Ritter Company, a
national food processor and tomato seed company in the 1950s. 

But not long after the Rutgers tomato was introduced, tomato farming
practices started to change. As harvesting became more mechanized, the
thin-skinned Rutgers tomato plummeted in popularity with farmers, who
were looking for heartier tomatoes that would last longer. When that
happened, the Rutgers tomato lost favor as a canning tomato.

“The significance of the original Rutgers to the history of the
modern tomato was mostly lost during the 1950s and 1960s as the
industry moved to F1 hybrid cultivars and mechanical harvesting of
processing types that are currently used in prepared soups and
sauces,” says Tom Orton, a professor in the department of plant
biology and pathology at Rutgers University who retired last year.
“The original developer of Rutgers, Lyman Schermerhorn, also retired
during the 1950s and most of the germplasm he developed during his
career, including Rutgers breeding lines, was lost.”

In 2010, Orton and a team of researchers started working on the Jersey
Tomato Project in an effort to revive the Rutgers variety, which was
believed to be lost to history. They soon learned, however, that
Campbell’s still had some original seed stocks used to develop the
original Rutgers variety stored away in a vault. In 2016, the
researchers were able to debut a re-bred version: the Rutgers 250,
which coincided with the 250th anniversary of Rutgers University.

It’s great that Campbell’s had preserved the original seeds so
this historic tomato could be reintroduced. Other tomato seeds were
discovered, too, which the Rutgers researchers grew out as well. One
of those was the KC-146, which, according to Cindy Rovins of NJAES,
was developed by Campbell’s for the production of tomato juice and
later used as a flavor standard as it continued to develop newer
varieties.

Another Campbell’s tomato, the Garden State, was introduced by
Campbell’s in 1947. In the Campbell’s naming convention, it’s
also known as Campbell’s 37 or KC-37. Bred from Pink Topper, Marvel
and Pritchard, the seeds are not easy to find, although they were
donated to the USDA Germaplasm Bank in 1960.

It’s ironic that the seeds of a tomato named for the nickname of a
state known for its Jersey tomatoes, which was part of a historic
breeding program, are not more widely available. Campbell’s was in
the food production business, not the seed business, so seeds were not
released to commercial seed companies. As the USDA noted in its
evaluation of the J.T.D., Campbell’s tomatoes were mainly for their
factory use—not for backyard gardeners or tomato enthusiasts.

The Garden State tomato, like many other varieties that Campbell’s
was responsible for developing, is a fine-tasting tomato. It’s no
wonder that Campbell’s tomato soup took its storied place in
American culture, cementing itself even further when Andy Warhol
painted his iconic Campbell’s Soup Can series that debuted in 1962.

Warhol once said of Campbell’s soup: “I used to drink it. I used
to have the same lunch every day, for 20 years, I guess, the same
thing over and over again.” In the two decades that he drank his
lunch, Warhol tasted iconic Jersey tomatoes like everyone else did.
Unbeknownst to any of them, they were consuming the fruits of a
historic and innovative tomato breeding program.

_Jeff Quattrone is the founder of Library Seed Bank, an artist and
seed activist who is working to preserve local food biodiversity
through seed libraries._

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