A Wonderful NPR Show about "NC Tomato Man" Remember that Guy? SEED SAVERS..
Very Nice Interview....and there's a Podcast ...at the Link. He handled it well about the GMO...according to my Scientist Partner. 
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How A Seed Saver Discovered One Of Our Favorite Tomatoes
Fortunately for those of us who are suckers for novelty, every year fruits and vegetables seem to come in more bewitching colors, shapes and flavors. Lately, we've been tickled by the cotton candy grape and the vibrant orange Turkish eggplant. (Egg yolks can be ghostly white, too, but that's another story.)
If you go to the farmers market this time of year, tomatoes are strutting their stuff in all sorts of glorious and quirky hues: green striped, white, pink, even purplish-brown. They boast intriguing names, like Mortgage Lifter, Arkansas Traveler and Pink Berkeley Tie Dye. Some are true heirlooms, passed down over decades or centuries. Others are brand new to the world, the progeny of the latest cross-breeding experiments.
We got to wondering just who, besides farmers, is to thank for this expanding panoply. And we learned that while there are many professional breeders tinkering with the desirable traits that show up in the new varieties, amateur breeders — passionate seed savers and collectors — also play a vital role in discovering fruit and vegetable varieties guarded and nurtured by families over generations. Every now and then, these amateurs convince seed companies that the rest of the world will want to enjoy something they've discovered.
Craig LeHoullier, a retired chemist from Raleigh, N.C., can take credit for introducing us to the Cherokee Purple tomato, one of the most popular heirlooms grown and sold today. You'd be forgiven if your first impression of this fruit, with its ungainly bulges and tones of brown, green and purple, was dismissive. But its flavor consistently knocks socks off, with its balance of sweet, acid and savory — even a hint of smoke.
LeHoullier is — it's fair to say — obsessed with tomatoes and their stories. With more than 3,000 varieties, he has one of the largest personal tomato collections in the country. In his small yard at his home in the Raleigh suburbs, he can grow only 200 plants, so each year he must pore over the collection to decide what makes the cut.
An avid gardener for much of his life, LeHoullier, 57, joined the Seed Savers Exchange in 1986 and began connecting with other gardeners and seed savers to trade tips and favorite varieties.
Soon, LeHoullier had built a reputation as a tomato connoisseur, joining a small group of other hard-core tomato seed savers committed to reviving heirlooms. (Heirlooms are much friendlier to seed saving than the ubiquitous red hybrid tomatoes that dominate the commercial market.)
One day in 1990, a packet of tomato seeds arrived in LeHoullier's mail with a handwritten note. The sender was John Green of Sevierville, Tenn., who wrote that the seeds came from very good tomatoes he'd gotten from a woman who received them from her neighbors. The neighbors said that the varietal had been in their family for 100 years, and that the seeds were originally received from Cherokee Indians.
"It was a question of being in the right place at the right time," says LeHoullier, who's now working on a book on heirloom tomatoes. "Green had the forethought to send them to me, hoping that I would love them."
His hunch was correct, and LeHoullier was so impressed with the tomatoes the color of a "bad leg bruise" that he named them Cherokee Purple and sent his friends at a few seed companies some seeds.
"If Craig hadn't said, 'This tomato is really amazing,' I doubt we would have tried it," says Ira Wallace, who coordinates the variety selection for Southern Exposure Seed Exchange, a cooperative seed company that's helped to promote and disseminate many heirloom varieties. "It was an ugly tomato, and before all these heirlooms came along, all we knew were red and yellow tomatoes."
Rob Johnston is the founder and CEO of Johnny's Selected Seeds, another company that got the Cherokee Purple from LeHoullier and now does good business from the seed. Johnston says it's rare that an amateur seed saver discovers a variety that becomes commercially popular, but it's more likely for tomatoes than, say, carrots.
"Tomatoes are always a favorite of seed savers because they're easy to save," says Johnston. "And tomato seeds have long viability, so they might sit in a glass jar in somebody's pantry for many years before someone discovers it and decides to keep growing it." But those purple carrots you might spy at the market? That's the work of professional breeders, says Johnston.
As for the family lore that often accompanies heirloom seeds like the Cherokee Purple? Its accuracy is always hard to judge, says LeHoullier. "It's one of the more fascinating and frustrating aspects of pursuing heirlooms. For the vast majority we have a tantalizing taste of history, but there are always more questions to ask," he says.
As for the Cherokee legend, Joe Brunetti, a horticulturalist with Smithsonian Gardens who manages the Victory Garden at the National Museum of American History, says it's quite conceivable that the Cherokees were growing tomatoes in Tennessee over 100 years ago.
"We grow the Cherokee Purple in the Victory Garden because it tolerates the humidity and diseases here better than the other dark tomatoes," says Brunetti. "That makes sense if it comes from the Tennessee River Valley originally, which is also humid."
And seed savers say discoveries like the Cherokee Purple help preserve not just genetic diversity but also history.
"The stories themselves offer a snapshot of a time and place and region — they're a real wealth of cultural history," says Sara Straate, who leads a project to document the stories behind the seeds in the collection of the Seed Savers Exchange.
http://wunc.org/post/how-seed-saver-discovered-one-our-favorite-tomatoes
= new reply since forum marked as read
Been a while since I've seen you, but it is summer.
Sid
and it's fine tomato. I grow some every year.
Love the work he's doing! Thanks for sharing!
Just listened to him on the radio.
I love stories about strange and delightful heirloom tomato varieties.
We are cool with that. We are ourselves part of some weird genetic modifying........We differ with our respective families.
Proves...."Strange Bedfellows" and meetings of mind can be found randomly for love and procreation?
Some throw back to something. 
I HAVE NO IDEA! 's
is More Important for us for other reasons.
Thanks for posting Koko!
as opposed to Monsanto...Seed Modifiers who PROFIT from "STUFF" that hurts our Ecology..and puts farmers into constant debtitude to Monsanto/DuPont for pesticides and profit gouging of the farmers all across our Globe. Indian Farmers committing suicide because of Monsanto driving them out of business and "drift crops" of Monsanto seeds invading local and organic farms with Little or No recourse for the farmers in the International Courts who supposedly monitor all of this.
Globilzation and Trade Agreements which work against the local farmers and "Keepers of Seeds" which has always been a mainstay of the local farmer to keep access to his own seeds and the best of the seed to do his own hybridization. NOW it's Global Corporations who DECIDE what we plant and where it goes and and even the origin of the seeds which they own the patents to...and they come after you if you keep your own seeds or want to grow your own varieties of what generations of your family used to grow.
It's considered....MODERNIZATION of the GLOBAL FOOD CROP by the INTERNATIONAL MONETARY ORGANIZATIONS in AGREEMENT WITH GLOBAL TRADE INTERESTS... the TPP and the Rest of the "T's" Agreements that work against ordinary folks in countries globally about how THEY deal with their planting, commerce and trad against the BIG MULTI-NATIONAL'S OWN Interests. 
You know me so well!
Very interesting article though, congratulations. You deserve public acclaim.
I am not sure we choose our hobbies or pursuits as much as they choose us - there seem to be people for everything - just in gardening, I guess you could say I major in tomatoes (and minor in pepper and eggplant) - but I have good friends who choose beans or lettuce or melons or corn - you name it.
What is most important is that seed saving isn't just a short-lived fad...that is how we could put our genetic heritage at risk. All we seed savers are doing is what people have been doing for hundreds - thousands - of years....growing great things, saving seed, sharing, spreading the word, and teaching/coaching others to do so.
I'd love to have you all to my garden for some tomato taste testing!