Solanum lycopersicum Seeds | Roma Tomato Lycopersicon
LATIN NAME: Solanum lycopersicum
COMMON NAME: Roma Tomato
Plant Profile
Roma is the standard plum tomato: a determinate plant 60-90 cm high, with dense foliage and heavy trusses of oval fruit 60-80 g, thick-fleshed and dry-seeded. Plants crop within 70-80 days of transplanting and then stop, which makes them ideal for a short season and for a single harvest.
The fruit ripens almost together, which is the point of a determinate variety: it allows a whole row to be picked for sauce in one or two passes. Romas keep well on the bench, ship better than heirlooms, and are the tomato behind most commercial paste.
The name covers a family of similar types rather than one fixed variety, and several strains are sold under it. The original was selected in Italy and improved in the United States in the mid-twentieth century, and it remains the reference point against which other paste tomatoes are judged.
Science & Biotechnology
Roma carries the genes for elongated fruit and for a concentrated ripening period, and it also has a relatively high dry-matter content, around 6-8 per cent against 4-5 per cent in a salad tomato. That is why it reduces to sauce without long boiling and why it dries successfully.
The variety is a determinate, or bush, type: the growing tip ends in a flower cluster, so the plant sets one main crop and stops. That habit is a package of linked traits, and modern breeding has used the same genes to produce the compact bush tomatoes sold for containers.
Lycopene, the red pigment, is highest in fully ripe fruit and is more available to the body when the tomato is cooked with oil. Roma is a good source precisely because it is eaten cooked. Its flavour is less aromatic than an heirloom, a trade-off breeders accepted for yield and firmness.
Uses & Benefits
Roma is a processing tomato: sauce, passata, paste, sun-dried halves, and the base of any stew that needs body. It is also the best tomato for freezing whole, since the flesh holds up and the skin slips off under water after thawing.
Fresh, it is firm enough for a sandwich and mild enough for a salad, though it lacks the aroma of a good beefsteak. In the garden the compact habit makes it a good choice for a windbreak row, for a raised bed and for a container on a patio, where it needs only a short stake.
Growing from Seed
Sow at 20-24°C, 5 mm deep, six weeks before the last expected frost. Germination in seven to ten days. Grow on at 16-18°C to keep the plants stocky; warmth and low light produce stretched seedlings that never recover.
Set out at 50-60 cm apart in full sun, in soil with compost and a handful of general fertiliser. Water consistently, since Roma splits if dry spells alternate with heavy watering. Because the plants are determinate, do not pinch out the growing tip: the terminal cluster is the crop. Support with a short stake and harvest the whole row when the fruit colour deepens, before the skins wrinkle.
Our Take
The reliable workhorse of the sauce garden: not the most interesting tomato to eat raw, and the one you will still be using in February.
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